Duplicate content on .co.uk and .com TLDs with different domain authority
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What's the best approach to take for a site that has identical content on the .co.uk and .com versions of the root domain? The .co.uk version has a significantly higher domain authority (54 vs 32 according to Open Site Explorer - see attached screenshot). But it's an international company with its largest customer base in North America and customers in over 60 countries. The company does not intend to localize content.
My initial thought before seeing the domain authority was to 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com domain to consolidate all the link equity under one international TLD. However, I wondered if the higher domain authority for .co.uk would be passed on if we did this.
I figured that a non-UK audience would be more likely to trust a .com site.
I still think 301 redirecting .co.uk to .com might be the best strategy in the long term. But is there likely to be a dip in rankings and organic search volume in the short term until .co.uk is replaced in the index by .com?
I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this.
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Hi there,
This is pretty much exactly what the rel="alternate" tag is for. Have you looked into that option? This allows you to use the .co.uk for the UK and the .com elsewhere: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
You will have trouble ranking a .co.uk in countries besides the UK, although moving everything to a .com in the future might be an option as well. However, it should be perfectly feasible to rank both sites with proper geo-targeting like this.
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