SEO and visibility in country specific webshop - gTLD or ccTLD?

Question

I have a small startup project with a patio heater company, where I have a gTLD (.com) and right now also a ccTLD (.dk).

These two shops/domains of course link to each other but infact they are two separate Shopify stores even though the storefront is the same. DA is around 20 on the ccTLD and 10 on gTLD.

Now I want to expand to Poland, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands (I have purchased these ccTLD's).

I just read this article, suggesting that a gTLD is better than having ccTLD's when wanting to become multinational. https://www.branded3.com/blog/choose-subdomain-subfolder-cctld-international/

My question is now, which is to prefer SEO-wise for the optimal setup and DA in each country?

1. Go with the gTLD and having the other languages served as de.example.com, pl.example.com etc.?
2. Having a CNAME setup on each ccTLD, so the shop will be on example.pl, example.de etc. and still "in the background" being served from the Shopify gTLD?

I am working from a Shopify platform so I would very much like to just use one store and then translating it (Langify) into the desired languages.

I hope somebody can point me in the right direction.

Answer 1

Yes gTLD is better than having ccTLD's because of it preserves your branding & link juices towards your main domain. The best uses of it's by Uber business model & the details are given belwo -

For TG = Lang - English with Different Countries. https://www.uber[dot]com/en/in/ (For India), https://www.uber[dot]com/en/au/ (For Australia) & https://www.uber[dot]com/en/fr/ (For France) What a lovely Sitemap here - https://www.uber.com/sitemap.xml

For TG = When Lang & Country are same - https://www.uber[dot]com/ru/ru/ (For Russia) https://www.uber[dot]com/fr/fr/ (For France)

For more details ref - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en