Trying To Use Parent Company's Content In Another Country
-
Hi,
I'm hoping someone can help me out here but this is what I am dealing with:
Say John Smith Companies sells Widgets across the United States. They have also formed a company called "Widgets of Canada" in an effort to sell their Blue Widgets only in Canada and I am in responsible for their website. Recently, John Smith Companies completely redesigned their website and it now has a really slick look and is loaded with great widgets content.
I would like to take their site and re-purpose it for use in Canada. However, I am concerned about duplicate content. I would be converting all the widget specifications from imperial to metric units, changing the title and description elements and also using a much different folders/ paths. Is this enough to avoid any issues with similar page content? Is there anything I can do with hreflang?
Thanks
-
Okay, great. Thanks for your responses. It sounds like I should be okay using the same content and since I will be changing to metric units and will be using localized terms and different folders/paths.
-
Hi Richard,
There should be no concern on duplicate content - in fact if you copy the site the biggest risk you run is that people will still land on the US version rather than the Canadian one (check this article on webmaster blog on international duplicate content)
Things you should do:
1. In webmastertools set the preferred country for each of the sites (under Search Traffic > International Targetting)
If you use a .ca extension for the Canadian site this is not necessary - it is automatically set to target Canada2. Use hreflang on each of the pages - in the head of each page add (of course you need to adapt the url's to your specific situation)
If you want other countries (outside US & Canada) to visit the American rather than the Canadian site you could also add:
You can check some pages here to see if implementation is ok.
3. Set the language tag in html - for Canada - for the US version
Alternative would be to use for US / for Canada4. Localize your content (as you already intended to do). It is however not strictly necessary to change all the titles & descriptions just for the sake of changing them - if the content has exactly the same meaning in en-ca & en-us it is not absolutely necessary to change it. Changing folders / paths - again - if it more logical to structure your content that way for Canadian users do it - but again not strictly necessary. Metrics & prices are changes which are absolutely necessary. Local contact details & about us would be good as well.
5. You could consider local (Canadian) hosting - although a local ip isn't a very strong signal anymore.
6. Try to build "local"(=Canadian) links to the .ca domain.
Interesting readings:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-websites-country-and-language/
https://moz.com/blog/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
Near-Duplicate Content
Hi, On my website, we are showcasing many products in both English and Spanish. We originally create each a product description in English, then we translate to Spanish. But sometimes, due to having numerous products, we don't translate to Spanish, and we just pull the English description on the Spanish page (so it has menus etc in Spanish, but the long Product Description in in English). English Example: http://www.viatrading.com/product.jhtm?id=34608
International SEO | | viatrading1
Spanish Example: http://www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/TIGR-LN-APP/Ropa,-Relojes,-Gafas-y-Accesorios.html?cid=4 Could that be considered duplicated (or near-duplicated) content? For SEO, would it be better if the Spanish product page was redirected to the English one if not translated? Thank you,0 -
Geo-Targeting separate TLD's where both are .com domains
Hi I have a client who owns two separate TLDs for the same brand (for the sake of this post, we'll call the two sites www.site-a.com and www.site-b.com). For site www.site-a.com the website has been around for a while and is their primary site for their US operations which is their heartland, is well established in the SERPS and is where they make most of their money. As they looked to expand to the UK, they then created www.site-b.com and added the UK as a subfolder (so www.site-b.com/uk) and geo-targeted it towards the UK in Webmaster tools . The site has recently launched but they now find that, when a customer searches for their brand in the UK, they find www.site-a.com in position 1 (which, given it's tailored for a primary US audience, has a significantly lower conversion rate for UK traffic) and www.site-b.com in position 2. However, the client doesn't want to specifically geo target www.site-a.com to the USA as they feel it might affect where they appear for other international markets aside from the UK. So the question is, how can they, with the existing infrastructure, help remove www.site-a.com from the UK SERPs without adversely affecting their rank elsewhere? Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for your help. James
International SEO | | jimmygs19820 -
Blocking domestic Google's in Robots.txt
Hey, I want to block Google.co.uk from crawling a site but want Google.de to crawl it. I know how to configure the Robots.txt to block Google and other engines - is there a fix to block certain domestic crawlers? any ideas? Thanks B
International SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
Multi-Country Duplicate Content
Hello, We have an ecommerce site that serves several countries on the same .com domain - US, UK and CA. We have duplicate content across these countries because they are all English speaking so there is little variance in the pages and they each sell most of the same products. We have implemented hreflang into our sitemaps but we need to address the duplicate content. We were advised to canonicalize our UK and CA pages back to the duplicate US pages (our US pages account for the majority of our traffic and sales). This would cause the UK and CA pages to fall out of the index but the visitor would still be taken to the correct country's page due to the hreflang. I'm leary about doing this because they are across countries. Is this ok to do? If not, how do we address the duplicate content since they are not on their own CCTLD's?
International SEO | | Colbys0 -
Local search listings for Global Company
hi, I work for a company that has offices in several countries world wide. At the moment we only have one website. As we are an online business ranking in local search is not a huge issue. However, I'd like to know more about the probability of each office being listed globally in local without having a site representing each office.
International SEO | | vibelingo1 -
Country specific domains pointing to a .com site
Hello, I am new to seo so please be easy if this happens to be a "silly" question. My company has a .com site. We are expanding into global markets, focusing on specific countries right now. General question: Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site? Thanks, Jim
International SEO | | jimmer0