Hi All,
I'm looking at optimizing a website with the potential to breakout in other markets. i.e UK, Europe, Japan etc.

If you had a clean slate and could start from scratch, which of the following structures would you implements.

www.yoursite.com/uk/
/eu/
/jp/

or

www.yoursite.com
www.yoursite.co.uk
www.yoursite.eu
www.yoursite.jp
* site content translated to suit local markets.


When purchasing country specific domains do search engines prefer locally hosted sites. I could see speed being relevant, locally hosted sites would be faster for those search in local markets.

I look forward to any feedback on the above.

thanks in advance
Btg

BTG, here's a thread that's basically about Google, but mcanerin's comments are a bit broader.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=8608

Hopefully someone will come along here who's familiar with multi-country promotion with the other engines as well as Google, who can go a little further into how the others - MSN, Yahoo & Ask and even country local engines - deal with it.

I'm not hands-on familiar with multi-country promotion, but I've researched it a lot for a project that still hasn't happened... and I'd say that for the spectrum of engines you'd definitely want country-specific TLDs and local hosting. After that, language and inbound links from local sites are a big help.

Thanks Marcia,

That link was helpful, though how much of the suggestions still hold true today?

Robert,
That's what I had in mind. Initial research showed for AU and UK returned results from site with country specifc TLD and those that were .com generally had strong IBL from country specific sites.

The current structure of the site i'm working on has the localized content placed within the structure of the main site.

i.e.
www.yoursite.com/uk/
www.yoursite.com/eu/
www.yoursite.com/jp/

Site doesn't rank well in either markets. Would you change structure to the TLD option or continue to work with what you have and work on strong IBL from these localized markets.

Thanks again for your feedback.

BTG

...Would you change structure to the TLD option or continue to work with what you have and work on strong IBL from these localized markets....

I'd do everything I mentioned... change to the TLD option... use local hosting... and get localized inbounds.