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
