Geotargeting duplicate content to different regions - href and canonical tag confusion
-
If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us). Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ?
The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want).
Im presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this.
Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/'
many thanks in advance to any commentators
-
Many thanks Gianluca !!
-
Hi,
I suggest you both to give a read to this post by DejanSEO, which is quite clear and - IMHO - points to the right interpretation of a somehow confused best practice.
-
Thats what i thought originally but getting confised when i read this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
Specifically this bit:
Annotating pages as substantially similar content
Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are targeted at multiple countries, you may use the rel="canonical" link element to specify your preferred version. We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
And read in conjunction with this article:
Specifically this bit:
The Effect Of Combining Canonical Tags & Hreflang Tags
Not forgetting that the canonical tags should only be used with content in the same language, when would we use both?
Well firstly, the use of both would involve what I usually call world languages such as English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. These languages are used in many countries and, whilst there are variations between the use of these languages in those countries, the variations are sometimes small.
Additionally, multinational publishers often save costs by using one version of the language for all countries speaking that general language, thus ignoring the regional variations. In other words, for Spain and Mexico, Google is presented with exactly the same content, letter for letter.
The canonical acknowledges that this is the same content. The Hreflang tag identifies which URL should be displayed in different sets of results.
So, in other words, canonical + Hreflang = same content + different URL.
Google knows the content is the same, but displays the correct URL for the Google domain search (e.g. google.com.mx will see the relevant URLs for Mexico displayed in the results).
-
With canonical tag it is a one way road:
You have Page A and Page B with the same content but you want to point out Page A
Page B has a canonical to Page A:
Page B will disappear from the Search Results transferring all the link juice that it has gained to Page A
If you have the same content in different languages then you should use hreflang telling search engines that the two are the same but in other language:
Page A and Page B will have both the following in their headers
This way you will not Geo-Target but Language-Target the two pages ;-)
-
thanks Istvan
but what about whether its a requirement, or suggested best practice, that if you have tags (say canonical) on one set of duplicate pages then you must also add to the other similar/dupe pages (on original site).
Can you have one but not the other without it causing issues or do you need both to stop duplicate issues ?
-
Sorry for responding late, but I somehow forgot to answer this one.
So basically I would consider putting HREFLANG to all of the pages (US, original and any other language). Please note that HREFLANG is connected to optimizing the same content on different languages and not for geo-targeting mainly.
The best example would be Belgium. You can have content in French and in Dutch, still you are optimizing for the same region.
-
Thanks Itsvan, its a good answer and further information! What im really trying to establish though is if its ok to ONLY add canonical & href tags to the US focused subdirectory site ? Do they need to be added to the main site too or can I leave them off (since dont want to geotarget the main site) ? Im confused by wording on google articles/bogs etc on this subject. Since think they say that if you put the tags on a duplicate page you need to also put tags with alternative region/lang tags on the corresponding dupe content page (although i dont want to since want to leave main site free of specific geotargeting). In other words is it a technical requirement/necessity to have tags on both sets of dupe content ?
-
Hi danarchism,
This is what we have on a quite big website:
1. Main site is geo-targeted for a specific country
2. sub-folders of the site are geo-targeted for other countries
3. On each Page in the header we have the HREFLANG to the other 9 languages we use on the site.
Still when we talk about SERP impressions we have many times overlays (Such as the Geo-Targeted content to the Netherlands will appear in the Google.be or Geo-Targeted content to Germany appears in Google.At).
I hope this helped,
Istvan
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 content
I have one client with two domains, identical products to appear on both domains. How should I handle this?
Technical SEO | | Hazel_Key0 -
Approach for an established site looking to serve different content to regions in a single country/lang
Hi guys, I have an established site that currently serves the same content to all regions - west and east - in a single country with the same language. We are now looking to vary the content across west and east regions - not dramatically, but the products offered will be slightly different. From what i gather, modifying the url is best for countries, so feels like overkill for regions within the same country. I'm also unlikely to have very unique content, outside of the varied products, so I'm mindful of duplicate/similar content, but I know I can use canonical tags to address. I have a fairly modern CMS that can target content based on region, but mindful of upsetting Google re; showing different content to what the bot might encounter, assuming this is still a thing. So, three questions from an SEO perspective - Do i need to really focus on changing my url structure, especially as I'm already established in a competitive market, or will I do more harm than good? Is the region in the URL a strong signal? If I should make some changes to the url and/or metadata, what are the best bang for buck changes you would make? How does Google Local fit into this? Is it a separate process via webmaster tools, or does it align to the above changes? Cheers!!! Jez
Technical SEO | | jez0000 -
Partially duplicated content on separate pages
TL;DR: I am writing copy for some web pages. I am duplicating some bits of copy exactly on separate web pages. And in other cases I am using the same bits of copy with slight alterations. Is this bad for SEO? Details: We sell about 10 different courses. Each has a separate page. I'm currently writing copy for those pages. Some of the details identical for each course. So I can duplicate the content and it will be 100% applicable. For example, when we talk about where we can run courses (we go to a company and run it on their premises) – that's applicable to every course. Other bits are applicable with minor alterations. So where we talk about how we'll tailor the course, I will say for example: "We will the tailor the course to the {technical documents|customer letters|reports} your company writes." Or where we have testimonials, the headline reads "Improving {customer writing|reports|technical documents} in every sector and industry". There is original content on each page. The duplicate stuff may seem spammy, but the alternative is me finding alternative re-wordings for exactly the same information. This is tedious and time-consuming and bizarre given that the user won't notice any difference. Do I need to go ahead and re-write these bits ten slightly different ways anyway?
Technical SEO | | JacobFunnell0 -
174 Duplicate Content Errors
How do I go about fixing these errors? There are all related to my tags. Thank you in advance for any help! Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisarein0 -
Duplicate Content - Captcha on Contact Form
I am going to be working on a site where the contact form is being flagged as duplicate content the URL is the same apart from having: /contact/10119 contact/31010 ...at the end of it. The only difference in the content of the page that I can see is the Captcha numbers? Is there a way to overcome this to stop duplicate content? Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Duplicated content on subcategory pages: how do I fix it?
Hello Everybody,
Technical SEO | | uMoR
I manage an e-commerce website and we have a duplicated content issue for subcategory. The scenario is like this: /category1/subcategory1
/category2/subcategory1
/category3/subcategory1 A single subcategory can fit multiple categories, so we have 3 different URL for the same subcategory with the same content (except of the navigation link). Which are the best practice to avoid this issue? Thank you!0 -
Duplicate content + wordpress tags
According to SEOMoz platform, one of my wordpress websites deals with duplicate content because of the tags I use. How should I fix it? Is it loyal to remove tag links from the post pages?
Technical SEO | | giankar0 -
Crawl Errors and Duplicate Content
SEOmoz's crawl tool is telling me that I have duplicate content at "www.mydomain.com/pricing" and at "www.mydomain.com/pricing.aspx". Do you think this is just a glitch in the crawl tool (because obviously these two URL's are the same page rather than two separate ones) or do you think this is actually an error I need to worry about? Is so, how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | MyNet0