Add another (ccTLD) domain to same wp

  • Hi all,

    I manage a shop with woocommerce (aromacorner.be) which is running since about a year now. In Belgium (.be domain) no complains concerning SEO, but we would like to improve SEO in the Netherlands, our northern neighbours. For those of you who don’t know, the northern part of Belgium speaks Dutch, the same language as The Netherlands. We’re from that part of Belgium, so our webshop is already Dutch; hence our goal of reaching The Netherlands better.

    So we now have purchased the domain aromacorner.nl to try and do that. We are aware that ideally you should alter the content for another domain, but we simply do not have the manpower and time for that now. Thus meaning that we want to run the exact same wordpress installation (db+files) on the .nl domain as what is running now on .be.
    But it can’t be a simple redirect from .nl to .be, when you start surfing from .nl, the url should remain aromacorner.nl/productX, the same should remain for the .be domain.

    You probably see it coming by now: how do we set this up technically? Something in the A-record of the .nl domain? And/or something in the wp-config or .htaccess of the .be domain?

    I’ve also found some info regarding the use of rel = “alternate” long href = “x” to deal with duplicate content for google, but how to implement this best? With a plugin? Or also .htaccess?

    All help welcome and much appreciated!

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  • Karl Silver

    (@karlfox2014akakldkarl)

    Hi, tomzorz.

    Considering the many problems you might run into with the same content on two different domains the option to clone the whole shop into a new folder accessed only by one domain might be the “one of the healthiest” ways to solve this. Of course that’s a lot of work.

    But otherwise your plugin licenses that might be tied to only one domain could break.
    Also payment gateways that might need access to one specific Instant Payment Notification (IPN) URL on your server can break. Of course there are also a lot of settings in the shop itself, that might change over time and would need to be managed in
    two systems from now on.

    Of course you could look into a possible WP multisite-setup. But here custom code would be necessary as well, as you probably won’t be able to share tables holding customer-, product- and order-information between two site instances out of the box.

    To avoid complexity you could go back and discuss the most basic features you need and find a different approach. For example:

    If you want to address SEO issues specifically you could possibly think about a sort of “landing page” or micro-site for your .nl Domain. Here you only feature a couple of products (or only bestsellers). You can add more over time, but for starters in this region you could just create a nice and delicious product index that does not cause that much work for you.

    To optimize for Google you can even use your desired URLs aromacorner.nl/productX and work with single-pages that feature more product pictures and details.

    Somewhere on the .nl site you also mention your business location in Belgium and inform potential customers about your first-class service also working as well “across borders”. ?? Some recommendations from (first-time) customers based in NL also might help.

    As soon as people click on a button like e.g. “More Info” (not “Add to Cart” as this could be misleading in this context) they are sent to the product page on your original shop on
    aromacorner.be. Again, you should inform the customers on the single-product page on the .nl domain, that when clicking Button X they will be redirected to the online shop on the .be domain.

    Maybe you can aggree on approaching the issue via a little bit of extra work on content and communication instead of a lot of work on the codebase.

    In my experience clients can live with a few obstacles as long as a shop-owner is presenting enough information at the right time, so users are not surprised somewhere in the middle of the process (e.g. “Why am I being redirected?” etc.).

    That’s just a proposal that might or might not be ideal for your use case.

    Have a great day, hope you can find a suitable setup.

    Regards,

    Karl

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