Website with a .pt extension vs a .org, US hosted

[Guest]

I need some feedback from those with int'l SEO experience, or that are smarter than me, or both.

A client in Portugal already has a site with a .pt extension and wants a fresh new site as a .org, US hosted, and in English only.

However, the SEO objectives will entail competing organically on Portugal searches, as well as queries referencing several other European Union nations (Switzerland, Norway, UK, France, etc.).

It seems to me that without hreflang's, regional languages & site extensions, no ccTLD, etc., what they're wanting isn't really going to happen.

Am I wrong? Am I right?

Is there some type of alternative workaround?

Int'l SEO is new to me and I could really use some feedback... and thank you!

[James]

They might get some residual traffic from those countries by just having an en-US site on a .org domain (less than 5% of all traffic I'd imagine) but nowhere near the levels you could get if you used country/language specific subfolders with hreflang implementation. So it would be .org/fr/ for French language targeting France, .org/en/ targeting English in the UK, then Switzerland you may need to separate it by language too, since there are a few spoken languages (i.e. .org/ch/fr/ for French speakers in Switzerland or .org/ch/de/ for German speakers in Switzerland etc)… hope that helps.

[Karen]

It’s so much easier to do on the one site with folders, as you can use a plugin to create the href Lang links between pages - but what is oroposed is still possible, it’s just more work.

You will still need href Lang, but they’ll need to be added manually to each page of both sites.

[Sharon]

Why wouldn't you just add an English side to your site? No traffic lost and no competing with your other site? Could buy a new domain that both go there too,...

[Dahni]

Redirect old domain to new, set up country folders on new domain, implement href Lang.