Question
Situation
My website DrivingTests101.com allows people to study for state-specific, written driving tests across 12 countries (majority English-speaking countries), and we make money thru ads (free for users). A user only cares about a test for their state (or where in the world they are moving to). My server is based in the US and I am getting penalized for this in the UK and Australia.
Questions
1. Do you recommend I use sub-directories (by country) or sub-domains?
2 (a). If sub-directories, how can I make Google believe I have a different IP address for each country? Can I continue to use Driving-Tests101.com/[Country Name], or does it have to be the specific de, fr, etc?
2 (b). If sub-domains, what happens to all of the link juice that originally was sent to .com? Is it all lost or split evenly for ca.driving-tests.com, fr.drivingtests.com, etc?
3. How do I avoid getting penalized for similar content on the country-specific sub-domain or sub-directory landing pages?
Many thanks,
Brian
PS - we only get 5k UV/month, a couple competitors have 500k UV/month and we cover multiple countries/more content, so I know there is a LOT of improvement we can make for SEO
Answer
There's no way to answer this effectively via a message. If you want to talk about this and get solid info, let me know. As you already know, we are ranked for some of the most competitive terms in the world... So we know our stuff.
SEO is a VERY dangerous field to "get it wrong" in... Because a Google slap is not something you ever fully recover from... Don't risk that.
The new hummingbird update is currently rolling out too... That makes it that much more important to get it right.
