E-Commerce site in 2 languages - Duplicate content or not?
-
How does Google view this?
Our current site works like:
www.domain.com/EN - English
www.domain.com/ES - SpanishAll products are the same, just different language and different URL for them - is this good or bad?
I thought of either
- Going with .co.uk or .com for "English" and a .es for "Spanish"
OR - Subdomaining it. www.es.domain.com and www.en.domain.com
Any advice appreciated!
- Going with .co.uk or .com for "English" and a .es for "Spanish"
-
If you just want the language covered Mark's hreflang, coupled with a subdomain or subdirectory, is the way to go. I tend to lean subdirectory in that case but I've not heard anyone make a slam dunk case for either.
-
That´s great - but if I want to target more than just the country but anyone who speaks English or Spanish - eg., not just UK or Spain for example?
Would it still be wise to do it?
thanks!
-
That indicates the language of the page - hreflang does better, in telling the search engines these pages are related, are not duplicate content, but are the same product and targeting searchers in different languages. This is how I recommend to clients today to configure their multilingual sites - this works for folder, subdomain, or ccTLD setups
-
We run a .com and a .ca site. I highly recommend the ccTLD domains because, as the video Tom linked said, it sends a strong signal as to which site is for which country. Additionally, you don't need to worry about duplicate content because, as Matt says in this video, Google does pick up the ccTLD and filter by the appropriate region so you don't need to do anything extra.
-
What about using name="Language" content="en"/> ?? or es as the case may be?
-
Guys - both of your answers are very helpful.
Our site is translated by humans native to spanish and english - however, our market reach is not just UK or Spain, but any english speaker or spanish speaker - there are so many different countries that speak both.
Thanks again!
-
With different languages, it's fine to target them to different subfolders on the same domain - this way, you get the strength of the domain helping out each of the subfolders, and link building for one can help the other.
I would recommend in this case implementing the hreflang tag, indicating to the search engines that these pages are translations of one another and are meant to target different languages.
With your site targeting languages and not countries, I wouldn't geotarget the subfolders via Webmaster Tools, and I wouldn't necessarily go down the country specific TLD root, .com, .co.uk, .fr, etc.
I think using the hreflang tag here is your best bet - you can learn more about it here - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
This should eliminate any duplicate content issues and help your site's performance in both languages.
Good luck,
Mark
-
Hi there,
I run an eCommerce website and we don't actually change the language (even though we do ship to all of Europe aswell as England).
Mainly because of what Matt Cutts teaches us in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWx31GeQWY
Unless you're committed to changing all of your product listings to the language in which you aim to sell in (manually) then it really isn't worth it.
I mean, by using a .fr domain name you're localising your website to just France, so you will only appear in Google.fr. But Google may pick your website up as "spammy" if the content is just thrown into a translator from English to French.
It's a lot of hard work if you're up to the challenge, but personally I'd stay away from it and if you do choose to do it, make sure you have a translator who can rewrite the pages into native French and not just generated french.
Hope this helps!
Tom
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I use rel="alternate" language tags on multiple domains?
On a page with the domain "www.example-1.com.br" (for pt-BR) I will include the following tags: That will work?
International SEO | | Ewerton.RD0 -
Duplicate content across English-speaking ccTLDs
Morning, If a brand offering pretty the same products/services has 4 English-speaking ccTLDs (.com, .co.uk, .com.au and .co.nz), what are the best practices when thinking about SEO and content? In an ideal world, all content should be totally unique, but when the products/services offered across every ccTLD are the same, this may prove tricky. Am I right in thinking that duplicate content across ccTLDs is tolerated by Google as they know you're targeting specific countries? Cheers!
International SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Multilanguage duplicate content question
I have following situation; First site, in four languages
International SEO | | nans
Second site, in one language Let's say we have the following setup: www.domain1.be/nl (dutch)
www.domain1.be/fr (french)
www.domain1.be/en (english)
www.domain1.be/de (german) www.domain2.be/ (french only) Possible problem is the content on
www.domain1.be/fr
www.domain2.be
Content on domain2 is a copy of domain1/fr. So French content is duplicated. For domain1, the majority (80%) are Dutch speaking clients, domain2 is 100% French.
Both companies operate in same country, one in the north, the second one in the south. QUESTION; what about duplicate content?
Can we 'fix' that with using the canonical tag? Canonical on domain1 (fr pages), pointin to domain2? Or vice versa.
Domain1 is more important than domain2, but customers of domain2 should not be pointed to domain1. Anybody any advice?0 -
Researching (and launching a site within) a foreign language market
Morning peeps, A client wants to clone their website for a foreign language market, obviously swapping all English content for whichever language/market they're looking to target. Any advice on how to research a foreign market (when I only speak English), or perhaps any pitfalls to look out for or advice you might have with a launch like this? thanks
International SEO | | Martin_S0 -
I have on site translated into several languages on different TLDs, .com, .de, .co.uk, .no, etc. Is this duplicate content?
Three of the sites are English (.co.uk, .com, .us) as well as foreign (.de, .no, etc.) - are these all seen as having duplicate content on every site? They're hosted under the same EpiServer backend system if this helps. But I am still copying and pasting content over each site, and translating where necessary, so I'm concerned this is indexed as being large amounts of duplicate content. Site traffic doesn't appear to be suffering but as I'm currently putting together new SEOs strategies, I want to cover this possibility. Any advice on ensuring the sites aren't penalised appreciated!
International SEO | | hurtigruten0 -
Alexa Rank and Linking from Article sites.
We are creating unique content and submitting our articles to article sites. I have some questions about the best way to go about this. 1. We are being very careful to create unique content for each submission - so we are not submitting the same article to multiple sites. Each submission is unique, so 1 article per 1 article directory. 2. When I did my research about these article sites at Alexa.com, I noticed that a lot of the article sites are ranking very well globally, but that a lot of them are #1 in Alexa for India. They are still ranked for other countries with very top ranking, for example, they may 9,000 Alexa rank in India and then 18,000 in the U.S. which is still very high. 3. We are trying to reach U.S. customers mostly, so I am wondering if we are still getting value by linking to these sites who have global reach (even though they are ranked best for India). I would think that this is very beneficial still, but I didn't want to get the wrong kind of traffic by getting links from sites that are primarily getting their traffic from India, even though they are also getting tons of traffic from the U.S. - I am assuming this is OK because a 18,000 or 19,000 Alexa Rank in the U.S. is still excellent and I will benefit by this. But I wanted to be sure. Feedback?
International SEO | | applesofgold0 -
How should I make my site better?
I am glad to join seomoz,I am from China,the seomoz is a famous seo service provider company,some reason is one seoer guru named zac introduce seomoz to Chinese seor. So I think if seomoz provider seo tools or service to chinese seoer is a good idea.The market is very big.But chinese biggest SE is www.baidu.com,not google.There is something diffrent from baidu and google. My site is www.cn-sen.com, It's good performance at google with the keyword "除湿机",but it's have some trouble at baidu.I think the content of website is the main reason.and internal link is not good. Could someone give me some advise of seo to make my site better performance? thanks very much.
International SEO | | tylrr1230 -
How can I see what my web site looks like from a different country?
I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!
International SEO | | Dennis-529610