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
-
What's the Best Strategy for Multiregional Targeting for Single Language?
I have a service based client who is based in the US but wants to expand to audiences in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Currently, all the content is in American English with international targeting in Google Search Console set to the US. I know that is going to have to change, but I'm unsure of the best strategy. Right now there are a few basic strategies in my head. Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags It's hard to come up with a perfect solution for content differentiation by region in order to implement hreflang tags with a region (en-au, en-ca, en-gb). Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip This one is pretty simple. However, I am completely unsure of its effectiveness. Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original The point of adding canonicals is to avoid the duplicate content, but then my new subfolders do not get indexed. I'm unsure of what type of exposure these URLs would receive or how they would be valuable. Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content High risk of a penalty with duplicate content, but my targeting will be the most efficient. Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags This is probably the safest bet, takes the longest, and costs the most money. However, how different will the content actually be if I change truck to lorry, trunk to boot, and optimization to optimisation? Maybe I'm missing something, but this conundrum seems extremely difficult. Weighing the cost, time, and possible result is challenging. Hit me with your best answer and thanks for taking a look at someone else's problem.
International SEO | | ccox12 -
Duplicate Content - International Sites - AirBNB
Good morning Just a quick question. Why does AirBNB not get penalised for duplicate content on its sites. For example, the following two urls (and probably more for other countries), both rank appropriately in the google (UK and COM), https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/getting-started/how-to-travel
International SEO | | joogla
https://www.airbnb.com/help/getting-started/how-to-travel Their are no canonical tags, no Alternative etc If I look at the following https://www.airbnb.co.uk/s/London--United-Kingdom
https://www.airbnb.com/s/London--United-Kingdom They both have alternative to point to the other language versions which I would expect. However they also both point to them selves as canonical. Would this not be duplicate content ? Thanks for your insights Shane0 -
3 month old site lost almost complete traffic overnight
Hi All, I started a Indian coupon and deal site http://www.couponspy.in/ around 3 month ago and traffic increased almost daily. But yesterday my site lost almost all of its traffic. Keywords which ranked 1-5 lost around 4-15 places and keywords which ranked 6-20 lost ca. 20-50 places. The Moz Crawl Diagnostics doesn't indicate any mayor issues. Has there been a Google Panda update in India? Reasons why my site has been affected? Please help!!!! 😉 I have seen the same traffic decrease on other coupon start ups, eg https://www.cuponation.in/ and https://www.cuponation.in/ Did we all make the same mistake? Any guesses?
International SEO | | ParvatiSingh0 -
Same language manage many country
Hello, I would like to hear how you would handle the following situation. I make website for people with a .be domain that also want to score in .nl . Both countries speak dutch. There are however slight variations between the two countries. For some it does not matter for others it can be handy. Ex. A specific product might be called diffrent in one country then the other. The main problem is for those that have a .be domain will not score on a .nl domain and visa versa. This due geo targeting. What would you do? Imagine we already have a .be domain (.be == belgium, .nl==Netherland both speak dutch) A: Buy a .nl and copy and show the same content on .nl as .be
International SEO | | nono_1974
B: Buy a .nl and make new content (lots of work)
😄 Buy a .EU, .com adres and Geotarget nl.somedomain.eu , be.somedomain.eu . But what about the content The main problem is double content and targeting the two countries.0 -
Changing server location for a global targetted site
Hi, I am just in the process of purchasing a site from someone. The site has a global target audience (well global English speaking anyway). The site is on a .info domain and is currently hosted in Germany. Checking on SemRush it looks like 70% of traffic comes from English speaking countries (US, Australia, Canada, UK). Now I need to move the hosting to one of my own when I change ownership of the site. Now does it overly matter where I choose my hosting as currently it is hosted in Germany (around 4% of visitors from Germany) but I want to do my best not to knock any rankings but I was thinking of moving it to a UK or US based host but still want to keep a general worldwide userbase. As the US accounts for the largest part of traffic (39%) would I be best choosing hosting based over in the US or does it not overly matter too much (I am in the UK so most hosting I use is UK based). I have read a number of posts on server location but most seem to be for site which have a country specific target audience. Thanks for your help! 🙂
International SEO | | Wardy0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
Will Google punish me cuz my websites content are almost the same?
If I have almost the same contents for my three e-commerce websites, say A.com,B.uk,C.ca. They're promoted in US, GB, Canada which are all English speaking. Will my site be punished because they're almost the same to Google?
International SEO | | SquallPersun0 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0