Duplicate content pages on different domains, best practice?
-
Hi,
We are running directory sites on different domains of different countries (we have the country name in the domain name of each site) and we have the same static page on each one, well, we have more of them but I would like to exemplify one static page for the sake of simplicity.
So we have http://firstcountry.com/faq.html, http://secondcountry.com/faq.html and so on for 6-7 sites, faq.html from one country and the other have 94% similarity when checked against duplicate content. We would like an alternative approach to canonical cause the content couldn´t belong to only one of this sites, it belongs to all. Second option would be unindex all but one country. It´s syndicated content but we cannot link back to the source cause there is none.
Thanks for taking the time in reading this.
-
Using canonical IS NOT the solution, because if you use canonical the FAQ pages of the canonicalized websites are going to be deindexed.
So, just do it if you really don't care about the traffic those answers can generate for your sites (as you can imagine, this is an ironic suggestion...).
Just use the hreflang, because Google in the last months has become quite smart in understanding that it means that you consider those pages relevant enough for the geo-targeted audiences to not filter them out even if they are substantially identical between country versions.
Said that, try to differentiate the FAQ pages (better localization of the language. i.e.: English UK is slightly different than American English), or even offering a local number for phone inquiries and localized email address for question via email.
In general, it is not a good idea using the crossdomain canonical in International SEO, and it should be used just in exceptional cases.
-
In order to make things easier you can implement hreflang via sitemaps.xml using this tool by Mediaflow: http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php.
-
If your site is based on templates so you can easily put in a header code (Wordpress, Joomla, most CMS, anything but a page-by-page HTML usually) you can insert it directly in by calling in the page itself like this:
" hreflang="x-default" />
" hreflang="en-au" />
" hreflang="en-us" />
" hreflang="en-nz" />This works on Apache servers - this starts with the domain and then request_URI pulls in the page you're on so /about, or /faq and adds the appropriate hreflang tag to that.
Also, when you're done implementing hreflang test it using Flang.
-
As the other users have pointed out, the alternate and hreflang tag would be most ideal. I am in a pickle myself with a very similar issue.
You must note that the alternate tag is to be applied on a page level so every page should resolve to the appropriate URL of it's copy on all other country domains.
So your homepage (.com) could have the following alternate tags:
But on your FAQ page, the alternates would be:
You'll have to rinse and repeat on all 3 sites and for every single page.
Tedious if you ask me! Does anyone know an easier way to go around adding alternate tags to 3 or 4 sites without doing it manually?
The advantage of implementing those however is that you are not canonicalising to one domain which means all your domains stand a chance of performing well in their regions (e.g a search on Google Australia will show the .com.au website).
Again, does anyone have a better approach to this or seen / heard of one? Apart from canonical of course.
-
Hreflang tags are great. I would highly suggest implementing these. Something that I was confused about when I first started using them was that all tags should be on all domains including its own.
For example: firstcountry.com/faq.html should have tags for:
and so on.
You can check that these have been implemented correctly in Google Webmaster Tools under "Search Traffic" -> "International Targeting"
-
I would start by implementing hreflang tags:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hreflang should take care of these type of issues as Google will associate the right country domain with the content. You may see some overlap for awhile - we've seen hreflang take a bit longer than we'd like to get fully set but once it is, it usually works well.
Short of that, you have 3 options. 1) change the content on all sites to be (somewhat) unique. 2) deindex all but one as you said, 3) canonical, as you said.
1, 2 & 3 all have problems so that's why I would start with hreflang.
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
-
Can you use no-index to counter duplicate content across separate domains?
Hi Moz Community, I have a client who is splitting out a sub brand from a company website to its own domain. They have lots of content around the theme and they want to migrate most of the content out to the new domain, but they also wanted to keep that content on the main site as the main site gets lots of traffic. My question is, as they want search traffic to go to the new site, but want to keep the best content on the original site too, so it can be found in the nav, if they no-index identical content on main site and index content on the new site will they still be penalised for duplicate content? Our advice has been to keep the thematic content on both sites but make them different enough so they are not considered duplicate - we routinely write the same blog post in 50 different ways for them but their Head of Web asked if the no-index is a route, which means they don't need to pay for and wait for brand new content? They are comfortable in losing traffic until the new domain gets traction. In theory, if they are telling Google not to index or rank the main site content, the new site shouldn't be penalised but I'm not confident giving that advice as I've never been asked to do this before. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Algorhythm_jT0 -
Best practices for lazy loading (content)
Hi all, We are working on a new website and we want to know the best practices for lazy loading of google for content.
Technical SEO | | JohnPalmer
My best sample is: bloomberg.com , look at their homepage. Thank y'all!0 -
Google+ Contibutor to: Link To Main Domain or Content Page?
Which is the best practice for the link to claim authorship for a guest post? I have tried both the main domain URL in the "contributor to" section of my Google plus and the page URL where the post is and both show my picture when testing in the Structured Data Testing Tool. Which is best to use? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | WSIDW0 -
Duplicate Content Problem!
Hi folks, I have a quite awkward problem. Since a few weeks a get a huge amount of "duplicate content errors" in my MOZ crawl reports. After a while of looking for the error I thought of the domains I've bought additionally. So I went to Google and typed in site:myotherdomains.com The results was as I expected that my original website got indexed with my new domains aswell. That means: For example my original website was index with www.domain.com/aboutus - Then I bought some additional domains which are pointing on my / folder. What happened is that I also get listed with: www.mynewdomains.com/com How can I fix that? I tried a normal domain redirect but it seems as this doesn't help as when I am visiting www.mynewdomains.com the domain doesnt change in my browser to www.myoriginaldomain.com but stays with it ... I was busy the whole day to find a solution but I am kinda desperate now. If somebody could give me advice it would be much appreciated. Mike
Technical SEO | | KillAccountPlease0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
My issue with duplicate content is this. There are two versions of my website showing up http://www.example.com/ http://example.com/ What are the best practices for fixing this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | OOMDODigital0 -
Is 100% duplicate content always duplicate?
Bit of a strange question here that would be keen on getting the opinions of others on. Let's say we have a web page which is 1000 lines line, pulling content from 5 websites (the content itself is duplicate, say rss headlines, for example). Obviously any content on it's own will be viewed by Google as being duplicate and so will suffer for it. However, given one of the ways duplicate content is considered is a page being x% the same as another page, be it your own site or someone elses. In the case of our duplicate page, while 100% of the content is duplicate, the page is no more than 20% identical to another page so would it technically be picked up as duplicate. Hope that makes sense? My reason for asking is I want to pull latest tweets, news and rss from leading sites onto a site I am developing. Obviously the site will have it's own content too but also want to pull in external.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
How can I have pages with media that changes and avoid duplicate content when the text stays the same?
I want to have a page that describes a specific property and/or product. The top part of the page has media options such as video and photos while the bottom includes the description. I know I can set up the media in tabs and have it separated by javascript, but everything resides on one page so there are no duplicate content issues. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside BUT what if I need to the photos and the videos to have separate URLs so I can link to them individually? For example, for a real estate site blog, I may want to send visitors to the page of the home tour. I don't want to link them to the version of the page with the photos because I want them to arrive on the video portion. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside?video=1 Is there any way to get around the problem that would result from the duplicate content of the product/property description? I do not have the resources in the budget to make two unique descriptions for every page.
Technical SEO | | WebsightDesign0