Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
-
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs.
USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/
UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/
AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/
CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/
Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website.
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/
And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes.
I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen.
Which is best solution for it?
Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Your comment made me doubt my research. I started a new question about it. Do you have a minut to give your vision on my situation? I would really appreciate it.
https://moz.com/community/q/duplicated-content-multi-language-regional-websites
Best regards,
Bob
-
The answer is very simple, independently if you are publishing the post on subfolders or subdomains or even country code domains names:
-
The canonical URL of the copies must be the URL of the original article. This is must be so because the content of all the articles is the identical. If you don't use the rel="canonical" as I suggest you'll fall in the duplicated content issue;
-
You use the hreflang annotations to tell Google what post's URL to show to the users using English and searching from the different blogs' countries.
Remember: the hreflang is not meant for solving the duplicated content issues, but only for suggesting what URL to show to users in a given language and country.
For duplicated content issues the solution is the rel="canonical".
-
-
Thank you very much for answer. Rel Canonical will help me to remove cross domain. But, I would like to get index over 4 different regions.
-
And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs.
I found the problem, you were writing well and following the Google guidelines and all was well but you've decided to get a bit more grey hat.It pays off to take the time to write better content for each region.
Well a few things you could try:
- Cross domain rel=canonical - this will stop duplicate but it would only assign rank for one site.
- Attempt to rewrite the article
- Hide it via robots or no index the page.
- Try the rel-alternate however if they are all in the same language I'm not sure if that would work as well not to mention you have 3 regions not 4.
Hope some of that helps.
-
It seems like you probably don't want 4 different TLD, but instead would want to use ahref lang to indicate to Google that you are showing different regions different content. See here for more of an explanation - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Alternatively, if you do want the unique TLDs you could put a canonical to whatever content is duplicate back to the main site (.com probably).
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 to do with outdated and irrelevant content on a website?
Hi everyone, On our corporate website we have a blog where we publish articles which are directly related to our company (house heating systems and gas cylinders) and some articles which are completely irrelevant to our core business, but which might be of interest to our potential clients. Recently I've been told that it is not a good idea to include these not directly related posts to our core business, because Google might be somewhat confused at to what our core business is all about. I was advised to research this topic and think of completely removing blog posts that are irrelevant to our core business from our blog. By removing I mean completely removing pages and setting a 410 status to tell Google that it is not a 404 error but that these pages were intentionally removed. I would like to hear some independent advice from Moz community as to what I should do? Thank you very much in advance.
Content Development | | Intergaz0 -
References for Healthcare Blog Content?
Hey everyone, We have a couple B2C medical/healthcare clients we produce content for and I was wondering what the industry stance is when it comes to giving references at the end of a blog, assuming there were no statistics or direct quotes used in the content. A lot of our content is written via research on a specific condition/treatment and doesn't really dive deep into specific medical nuances. Things like risks, recovery timelines, questions to ask, etc. are written about mostly. Still, should we be providing general references at the end of blogs to sites like WebMD, Medscape, etc. Thanks for any input!
Content Development | | danielreyes0 -
Content Writing - it should be for the main corporate site, blog or for social media?
Hi There, I have my main site : example.com and a related blog https://blog.example.com/ My management does not believe frequent content posting on the example.com My Queries 1- Will it help boost ranking of **example.com **if we share frequent content on our blog https://blog.example.com/? How much impact it has? 2- Every body says content is the king, Ok fine, but when you are not allowed to share it on the main corporate site, then where to share it? Blog and social media sites? please help. 3- We are in a business where clients do not bother to go on sites and read, so in this scenario is it correct to say that you hav to create the content for search engine consumption even when your clients dont need it/or have not in the habit of reading it? Hope somebody will enligten me caught in catch 22. Regards Tanveer
Content Development | | Sequelmed1 -
Difference in Forum and Blog for SEO
I was pushing my employer to agree to switch to add a blog onto our site and he asked me, what is the difference between the blog and a forum for SEO purposes. Besides the general look and feel and a forum being more community oriented, is a blog better than a forum for seo, and if so, why? It can be vice-versa I just need to fully understand this myself so I can begin to work on one and explain it to my employer. If anyone can provide any insight, it will be much appreciated.
Content Development | | ithvac0 -
How many categories should you have within a blog / Wordpress Site for SEO?
Hi Guys I am just wondering whether or not for SEO purposes it is better to have a small number of categories for your blog posts to fit into as opposed to numerous ones. The reason I ask is that I have one site which is fairly new to the search engines - 8 months old which has 7 general categories within the blog for instance "rail contractors", "railway construction" "airport construction" etc I have another site which is 10 years old which has built up 25 different types of categories for instance brand design, brand development, brand management (i guess you could put all these under 1 category "branding"? We've been writing lots of press for both sites... yet the younger site is getting more coverage on Google page 1. Would this be because the blogs / press are more concentrated under a specific category as opposed to being spread thinly throughout the site? Any help would be appreciated. Debs 🙂
Content Development | | lethalmarketing0 -
Duplicate external links?
I have been guest posting at a variety of reputable blogs in my niche. I generally write once or twice a month and have a bio link with a link to my blog. I'm wondering if multiple links from the same domain (but different pages) helps, or if there are some diminishing returns here. Should I only be writing one post for them? Of course, there are other non-SEO benefits too, because these are reputable sites. But I'm wondering how this helps my SEO? Thanks in advance!
Content Development | | JodiFTM0 -
Onsite Blogging Vs Guest Blogging
Hey all! I have a limited amount of time allocated to writing instructional blog posts for my company. When I complete an article I can do whatever I want with it: pitch it as a guest post on an industry blog, or post it on my company's onsite blog. I know there's not a magical solution regarding the percentage of time one should devote to guest blogging v. focusing on the company blog, but I figured I'd throw the conundrum out to the Mozzers anyway. In your opinion, how many of your writing resources should be devoted to guest posts, and how many should be devoted to maintaining the onsite blog? What if our onsite blog isn't currently receiving a lot of traffic? Thanks! Meg
Content Development | | ClarityVentures1 -
Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
Content Development | | ProjectLabs0