Multilanguage duplicate content question
-
I have following situation;
First site, in four languages
Second site, in one languageLet'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?
-
Sure.
-
Can I use both?
-
That meta is not taken into consideration by Google, but only by Bing (for which is essential).
So, if you don't care about Bing (and I think it is so, being a very tiny percentage of the search market in Belgium), you can avoid it.
-
What's the difference with this meta tag?
-
Thank you.
Multi-country is not necessary for these sites. Only avoiding duplicate content.
-
hreflang is 100% the way to go, however you must consider the x-default as well.
If you have clients using google.ae (UAE) to find you and they use arabic to search they will not find you. As google will not show your results in that search engine. Many people in UAE search in arabic but are happy to read english or many other languages, this is the same for china, russia and many others. So if you have customers from other countries not searching in the languages you have set then you should have one site set as x-default, this will tell Google to send all other traffic to this location and show your website in all search engines.
I have used hreflang multiple times and frequently speak with John Mueller at Google about it. Its a great tool and once implemented you will start to see results in just a few days.
Here is a great guide https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
-
You answered yourself.
Use the cross domain canonical in domain1 (domain.be/fr/), being the href of the rel="canonical" the corresponding one of domain2 (domain2.be).
This other tip, then, is a a possible addition, if you have also visits from outside Belgium:
- Implement hreflang in both domain1 and domain2;
- In domain1 and domain2 the mark-up referring to the french versions should be:
<rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="http://www.domain2.be"></rel="alternate">
<rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="http://www.domain1.be/fr/"></rel="alternate">
Doing so you will ensure that Google will show always the domain2 French URLs to french speaking people in Belgium, but it will show the French URLs of the domain1 to all the people speaking french and searching from outside Belgium.
note 1: even if you use the hreflang the cross domain canonical should be used as explained at the beginning.
note 2: if you use the hreflang, remember to use it also for expliciting the target of the German and English URLs, and from what I understand, it would be multilingual, not multicountry, hence something like:
<rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.domain1/en/"></rel="alternate">
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
-
Duplicate Page Content due to Language and Currency
Hi Folks, hoping someone can help me out please I have a site that I'd like to rank in France and the UK but I'm getting a stack of duplicate content errors due to English and French pages and GBP and EUR prices. Below is an example of how the home page is duplicated: http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=fr
International SEO | | Marketing_Today
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=fr
http://www.site.com
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=fr
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?sl=fr?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=fr
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=EUR
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=EUR
http://www.site.com/?sl=en¤cy=GBP
http://www.site.com/?sl=en
http://www.site.com/?currency=GBP
http://www.site.com/?sl=en?sl=en Each page has the following code in the that updates according to the page you are on: How do I simplify this and what's the correct approach?0 -
Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links). Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.". Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text? How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do. Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links. Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings. Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
International SEO | | raido0 -
Is International Geotargeting with Duplicate Content Effective?
A company located in Canada is currently targeting Canada through the geotargeting setting in Google Webmaster Tools. Google.ca rankings are good, but Google.com rankings are not. The company would like to gain more traction for US people using google.com. The idea on the table is to set up a subfolder www.domain.com/us/ and use WMT to designate this version for the US. Here's the kicker: the content is exactly the same. Will Google consider the US version duplicate content? Is this an effective way to target US and Canada at the same time? Is it better to forget a duplicate US site altogether and use the "unlisted" setting in WMT?
International SEO | | AliveWired0 -
Do you think the SEs would see this as duplicate content?
Hi Mozzers! I have a U.S. website and a Chinese version of that U.S. website. The China site only gets direct and PPC traffic because the robots.txt file is disallowing the SEs from crawling it. Question: If I added English sku descriptions and English content to the China site (which is also on our U.S. site), will the SEs penalize us for duplicate content even though the robots.txt file doesn’t allow them to see it? I plan on translating the descriptions and content to Chinese at a later date, but wanted to ask if the above was an issue. Thanks Mozzers!
International SEO | | JCorp0 -
International SEO Question with regards to Sub Folders in Webmaster Tools
So, we have a website in 18 or so different languages. bluewidgets.com/br bluewidgets.com/cn etc I have added each sub folder in Google Webmaster Tools and 'pointed' them to be at their respective geographic specific. However, the United States version of the website is sitting on the root domain. Is there any issue with me pointing the root domain at United States Google, considering there are 18 sub folders already pointed at different regions?
International SEO | | LukeyJamo0 -
Small question about geo targeting
I have geo targeted my domain for my country in Google's Webmaster Tool. Does it mean that I have blocked visitors from other countries.
International SEO | | ksbnok0 -
SEOMOZ.ORG New Comer Question
Hi, I am just curious if Seomoz.org supports other languages in French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese for Google Ranking ? Thanks. David
International SEO | | Stevejobs20110 -
Google search cache points to and uses content from different url
We have two sites, 1 in new zealand: ecostore.co.nz and 1 in Australia: ecostoreaustralia.com.au Both sites have been assigned with the correct country in Webmaster tools Both site use the same urls structure and content for product and category pages Both sites run off the same server in the US but have unique ip adresses. When I go to google.com.au and search for: site:ecostoreaustralia.com.au I get results which google says are from the Australian domain yet on closer inspection it is actually drawing content from the NZ website. When I view a cached page the URL bar displays the AU domain name but on the page (in the top grey box) it says: _This is Google's cache of http://www.ecostore.co.nz/pages/our-highlights. _ Here is the link to this page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Zg_CYkqyjP4J:www.ecostoreaustralia.com.au/pages/our-highlights+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au In the last four weeks the ranking of the AU website has dropped significantly and the NZ site now ranks first in Google AU, where before the AU site was listed first. Any idea what is going wrong here?
International SEO | | ArchMedia0