International best practice

James Woollam Silver
Managing Director at F+W Media International

14 May 2012 17:42pm

If I've missed a thread on this topic then my apologies, but I couldn't find one that covered the question exactly...

We intend to launch a content site serving a niche category from which we will build audience and redirect into other revenue driving online businesses such as eCommerce. The site will be rich in project materials, news and other content and will serve an international English language audience.

The content works without a need to alter for local cultural reasons. However, we need to be able to create links into local market eCommerce businesses for reasons of currency, shipping etc.

So my question is what's the best model for this from an overall viewpoint, taking into account SEO, experience etc.

1) One content site with geo targeted links into eCommerce sites dependent on the users location.
Pros: We can build a single site for a global audience with all the associated benefits. Cons: The geotargeting is a good principle but will have practical challenges in application, social media etc

2) Separate sites by geography that duplicate the same content.
Pros: Easy to manage the links into eCommerce. Cons: Gives us 2x community sites to run and manage which have essentially the same content so duplicating work

Any advice/experience on this welcome.
Martin Newman Silver
e-commerce consultant at Martin Newman

24 May 2012 08:09am

Hi James,

Apologies for the delayed response!

If you can produce content that doesn't need to be tailored for the needs of local markets, then on first view from an operational perspective, that appears to make sense. And if this is an English language proposition only then that does lend itself to option 1: having one site serving all markets.

This said, fully localised sites always lead to more meaningful engagement, and therefore you may find that it helps to create some localised content to make the proposition even more relevant for the needs of local market users/customers. And with option 1 you won't be able to do that.

Option 1 also has challenges as geo/IP targeting isn't full proof.
And you rightly point out that it also has challenges from a social media perspective.

I'm also not clear on what the customer journey would be like with someone going from an English language site to a local market e-commerce site.

I also fully understand your point about the downside of having to maintain more than one community site. But in my opinion, option 2 provides more scalability and flexibility as you grow. It should also help provide a better overall customer journey.

It will also help you build more traffic organically through SEO as localised content will be far more relevant for all search engines.

So to conclude, I'm convinced the upside and increased ROI from option 2 will considerably outweigh the costs in maintaining more than one site.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

Martin
James Woollam Silver
Managing Director at F+W Media International

24 May 2012 08:56am

Many thanks Martin. I think that the other work I've done researching this supports you view that option 2 is going to be the best route to take.

James
Thomas Patric
CEO at Amlabs

15 July 2012 05:57am

James, all that I could say is 'you have done a good work'. I appreciate you!!

Thanks
http://www.themodernman.com/nice_guys.html