dilby asked
Member (0 upvotes)

Difference between hreflang and separate site for international organic results

Hi all - I have a .com.au shopify store and want to branch out to target new zealand. I own the equivalent .co.nz domain name but really want to avoid having two stores if possible as the admin/costs of syncing everything is prohibitive. To start ranking on google.co.nz organic results I'm wondering can I just point .co.nz to the same site and use the hreflang protocol to flag it as the nz version, or is it far better to have a completely separate site?

Many thanks

Chedders
Moderator (243 upvotes)

Not too sure how much control you have using shopify but the normal route is to create country folders so

yourdomain.com/au/category/product
yourdomain.com/nz/category/product

then yes you use hreflang to show which one is for which country. This allows you to run 1 site but includes country-specific content on each page. For example if I was running a site targeting USA and UK my UK site I would be spelling things like colour on the UK version but color on the USA version. Prices on the UK version would be GBP but the USA site USD. etc

There is a lot to think about when going after new countries and depending on your niche this can be quite complex. Please give it some detailed thought before rushing ahead. You have to think as if it was a bricks and mortar business, operating in other countries comes with its own rules.

Good advice?

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Nizam18
Member (-2 upvotes)

Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage.

Good advice?

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Nizam18
Member (-2 upvotes)

The #1 result in Google's organic search results has an average CTR of 31.7%. ... Organic CTR for positions 7-10 is virtually the same. Therefore moving up a few spots on the bottom of the first page may not result in more organic traffic.

Good advice?

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Difference between hreflang and separate site for international organic results

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