Multiple Countries, Same Language: Receiving Duplicate Page & Content Errors
-
Hello!
I have a site that serves three English-speaking countries, and is using subfolders for each country version:
- United Kingdom: https://site.com/uk/
- Canada: https://site.com/ca/
- United States & other English-speaking countries: https://site.com/en/
The site displayed is dependent on where the user is located, and users can also change the country version by using a drop-down flag navigation element in the navigation bar. If a user switches versions using the flag, the first URL of the new language version includes a language parameter in the URL, like:
In the Moz crawl diagnostics report, this site is getting dinged for lots of duplicate content because the crawler is finding both versions of each country's site, with and without the language parameter.
However, the site has rel="canonical" tags set up on both URL versions and none of the URLs containing the "?language=" parameter are getting indexed.
So...my questions:
1. Are the Duplicate Title and Content errors found by the Moz crawl diagnostic really an issue?
2. If they are, how can I best clean this up?
Additional notes: the site currently has no sitemaps (XML or HTML), and is not yet using the hreflang tag. I intend to create sitemaps for each country version, like:
- .com/en/sitemap.xml
- .com/ca/sitemap.xml
- .com/uk/sitemap.xml
I thought about putting a 'nofollow' tag on the flag navigation element, but since no sitemaps are in place I didn't want to accidentally cut off crawler access to alternate versions.
Thanks for your help!
-
Yep, given your resource constraints, I'd focus on translations for now. If you ever get to a point that there is something bigger than price differentiating your content, then you can think about geo-targeting. You will need the resources to differentiate the content though.
Right now, my recommendation is to drop the country specific content and just offer English for now. Your content can rank for any English speaking search, regardless of country. However, if the terms people use in the US, UK and Canada differ that much, you can "translate" the content (en-us, en-gb, en-au) and use the HREFLANG tag.
For price changes, that's tricker, but do you offer the price in search results via schema? Does it show up? If not, then you can use cookies to set the prices dependent on the country the person chooses (try not to use IP address, and if you do, make people confirm the setting).
For now, focus your time and efforts getting the flow right for the user. Only worry about HREFLANG if your English content needs to be differentiated for term usage. Then focus your efforts on getting those upcoming translations right. When that is ready, then really use HREFLANG.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi Kate,
Nifty quiz and flowchart! Thanks for sharing it. All the countries targeted are English-speaking, though further expansion to non-English speaking countries is planned for 2015. Here are the answers to the questions:
1. Does your business/product/content change in different countries?
A: Not really. 90% of the products are available in all three countries, and only one country is currently lacking the remaining 10%, and it will start selling those products there in 2015.
2. Would it make sense to an international visitor to see different site content? (ex. currency, localization, etc.)
A: Currency - yes. Otherwise, not really.
3. Do you have the resources to differentiate the content?
A: Not currently. This is a set of branded products, and the product descriptions use extensive "on-brand" language.
4. Are there multiple official languages for any of these countries?
A: Yes, Canada's official languages are English and French. There is no French version currently available.
5. Do you plan on offering the site content in all official languages?
A: Next six months - no. Late 2015 - maybe.
Going through the quiz, if I answer:
1. No, 2. Yes, 3. No
This is the recommendation:
Your International Strategy is:
Translate Only
- Don’t machine translate, while manual translation is costly, it’s the best for your goals.
- Put your HREFLANG in XML sitemaps.
- Use the Language Meta tag for Bing translation targeting.
- Don’t use a ccTLD. That is for Geo-Targeting only.
Aside from the manual translation portion, do you think #2 and #3 are still the best solutions for this situation?
Thanks for your help!
-
Hi!
This is a tough one because I can't tell if you mean to be geo-targeting or translate. It's not a one or the other thing, but it usually is when you are just targeting english speaking countries. Can you do me a favor and go to http://www.katemorris.com/issg/ and go through the questions there? Let me know what the "answer" is for your situation and I'll help you get to the right solution.
But in short, yes, the duplicate content is a real issue with or without the lang parameter.
Let me know!
-
Oh this is a tough one. The problem is that no matter the tags and language, the content is the same. It is reflecting duplicate content because it is duplicate content. Duplicate content within your site is serious, especially if you are trying to target keywords on those pages.
The hreflang tags should help you be able to display languages without using so many duplicate pages. I don't have much experience with that tag, but my advice would be to look into it further to help with your duplicate content issue. No following the duplicate pages will ultimately effect their rankings, so that probably isn't the best thing to do.
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 Should I Do About Duplicate Title Warning From Category Pages Of Store?
I know a lot of the MOZ warnings can be ignored, however, I'm trying to figure out of this one should be added to that list: my store has urls setup like this for categories: https://www.mysite.com/sweaters https://www.mysite.com/sweaters/page/2 The meta title is "Sweaters" for both pages. Is that bad practice? I don't think I can automatically change the meta title to to Sweaters Page 2 or even want to. or should I do that? Or just ignore these type of warnings?
Moz Pro | | IcarusSEO0 -
URL Parameters causing duplicate content - Login/Registration page
All, I just recently acquired a new client and right away I noticed an abundance of duplicate content being recorded after the moz crawl diagnostics was completed. After a quick digest of the issue, it seems that the majority (90%) of the outlined duplicated content is stemming from the client's Login/Registration page. Upon clicking (without being logged-in) any asset or forum discussion board link within the site, the user is automatically redirected to the Login/Registration page, which seems to create this massive redirect loop associated with dynamic url parameters. Ex. After clicking on a select internal link (asset or discussion board) the user is redirected to the Login/Register page which presents the page and a URL that looks a lot this this: Ex. 1 https://www.clientsite.com/register-login?ReturnUr...xxxx%xxxx%xxxx%...... Ex. 2 https://www.clientsite.com**/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/register-login?returnurl=/page-titl**e/ These URLs seem to becoming larger and larger... The client wants to ensure users have to Login/Register within their site before they're allowed to view the content. This process doesn't allow for any type of preview page to be viewed by a user prior to clicking on the internal link, which in turn doesn't allow any preview pages to be indexed. Right now, Moz is picking up all of the redirect and labeling them as duplicate page content/duplicate page titles based on the Login/Registration page. Questions/Comments: Would it be wise to create preview pages for the asset pages and discussion board pages to allow for proper indexing? - Could this be a CMS issue? Current being used on this is, Kentico. There are thousands of pages being recorded in the crawl as duplicate, however only 14 seem to be indexing with duplicate title tags. 301 or canonical redirect strategy? Moz crawl data issue? Again, this is my first look at this issue, so more information is bound to come out soon! Please let me know if anyone has run into this issue and if you have a possible solution to get rid of this redirect loop process. Thanks! -T
Moz Pro | | MattLacuesta0 -
Help me to know why are all pages not being tracked by the Moz tool for on-page optimization reports?
The On-page Optimization report that the Moz tool shows, is not tracking all the pages from my website. I know this because it isn't showing a ranking for all pages on my website. Is there a particular reason why this is happening? It is important for me to know details of all pages, else it does not give me a comprehensive picture of what's going on in SEO.
Moz Pro | | jslusser0 -
Okay how do I fix this cannibalization error?
Okay so check it out. I already have the problem where my main page shows 3 of my posts of 3 popular posts and the SEOmoz optimization tool tells my there are like 60 keyword occurances? for the damn page so I had to make it look damn ugly for my views and lowered it to 1 post and 2 popular posts. Can I fix that? Another thing - The SEOMOZ tool keeps telling me I have this cannibalization crap on all my posts because my homepage in the upper left corner has the keyword in it and in the footer of the template, my homepage title shows up (Keyword). What the heck do I do to fix this? And also another question - I have my main page AND 1 of my posts ranking for the same keyword. Is there a problem?
Moz Pro | | 6786486312640 -
Duplicate Content Issue from using filters on a directory listing site
I have a directory listing site of harpists and have alot of issues coming up that say: Content that is identical (or nearly identical) to content on other pages of your site forces your pages to unnecessarily compete with each other for rankings. Because this is a directory listing site the content is quite generic.The main issue appears to be coming from the functionality of the page. It appears that the "spider" is picking up each different choice of filter as a new page? If you have a look at this link you will see what I mean. People searching the site can filter the results of the songs played by this harpist by changing the dropdowns etc... but for some reason the filter arguments are being picked up...? Do you have any good approaches to solving this issue? A similar issue comes from the video pages for each harpist. They are being flagged as identical content - as there are currently no videos on the page. | http://www.find-a-harpist.co.uk/user/39/videos | http://www.find-a-harpist.co.uk/user/37/videos | Do you have any suggestions? Many thanks for taking the time to read this and respond. | | | | | |
Moz Pro | | dseo241
| |0 -
Domain vs. page authority?
hey i've been told that page auth is more important than domain authrity on open site.. why is that?
Moz Pro | | daxvirgo0 -
Will canonical tag get rid of duplicate page title errors?
I have a directory on my website, paginated in groups of 10. On page 2 of the results, the title tag is the same as the first page, as it is on the 3rd page and so on. This is giving me duplicate page title errors. If i use rel=canonical tags on the subsequent pages and href the first page of my results, will my duplicate page title warnings go away? thanks.
Moz Pro | | fourthdimensioninc0