How to use international internet domains (.it, .co.uk, .es, ...) to the best for SEO
localization, seo
Solution
If you use a 301 "Moved Permanently" redirect from `example.it` to `example.com/it` it should give your example.com domain almost as much benefit as if you had linked to it directly.
SEOmoz:
A 301 Redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page.
SEO Blog:
According to Matt Cutts “you only lose a tiny bit of SEO value whenever you use a 301 permanent redirect”
The small loss that both sources mention, is probably related to speed: Search engines prefer fast pages, and a redirect results in slightly slower page loads (see Yahoo Performance Best Practices).
So, the extra redirect likely seems to produce a tiny disadvantage. However, there is so much guessing when it comes to SEO, I wouldn't care too much.
But as your `example.it` domain is never going to show up as a search result anyway (because of the redirect, only `example.com/it` will be indexed), you can just as well link directly to the `.com` version, to be on the safe (and fast) side.
To wrap it up:
- people will not see the `example.it` domain anyway, except they look at the status bar while they hover the link
- it is slightly better and faster to link directly to the target of your redirect, `example.com/it`
- just use your simpler `example.it` domain for cases where people actually type your URL
Problem
I have developed a web application in English - you can reach it, say, at www.example.com. Then, I made the Italian localisation. Basically if you go to www.example.com with an "Italian" browser, the language is automatically switched to Italian. I have bought also the domain example.it. If you go to: http://www.example.it you are automatically redirected to http://www.example.com/it/ where you can read the website in Italian. Now I am doing some PR in Italy writing guest blog articles in Italian. My question is: in order to benefit the most from SEO, should I link www.example.it or www.example.com from those articles in Italian? Links to authoritative sources will be very much appreciated. Thanks, Dan