Expanding a websiste from a region to global scope.

Some advice requested.

I have a website that is an industry specific business directory/community that is for the australian region. One of the features is that it searches and lists businesses via australian states.

I am contemplating opening the website up for America, Canada, UK, Europe and so on and I was wondering the best way to approach this for the sake of ease of use and search engine optimisation.

Do I create a separate clone of the website for each region. eg. www.mywebsite.com.au, www.mywebsite.uk, www.mywebsite.ca

DO I have it on one domain with clones of the website in different subdomains eg. au.mywebsite.com, uk.mywebsite.com, ca.mywebsite.com

or do I have it as one large website with different features, and search results displayied for different users from different regions based on their ip address.

Thank you in advance for any help or advice.

Joost said
Whenever a website is localized for me specifically, I prefer to see that back in the URL – if I’d want to view the USA -version I believe I should be able to without spoofing my IP and what not

Hence, I’d suggest using mywebsite.com as a portal that redirects to au.mywebsite.com or uk.mywebsite.com (or perhaps simply mywebsite.com/au and mywebsite.com/uk). You can automatically forward users based on their IP’s location, but if users wanted to visit the other locales, they would be able to by browsing to the localized URL .

Just my opinion from a user viewpoint though

Thank you for the advice. This is new territory for me.