Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
.ca and. com domains
-
Hello,
currently the main site im working on is a .com, but have the .ca version purchased from register.com. should i have this setup to redirect to the .com site. will google see these as dup content. We have the .ca for our canadian customers but both sites are identical. Thank you
-
There's not really much more I can tell you without seeing and checking the actual site, LB.
If you're not comfortable listing the site address here publicly, you can send it to me in a PM (personal message) if that's better.
Otherwise it's just going to be too many back and forth messages for me to be certain I'm clear how your site & domains are configured.
P.
P.S. I appreciate you marking a couple of good answers!
-
With the current way that we have it setup now would we have to worry about duplicate issues? If I search on our xxxxxx.ca domain, regardless of where we are on the site is always .ca none of the custom pages or sub directories show.
Thanks for all of your help!
-
Glad to help!
As far as register.com's Premium Web Site Forwarding, I'm not familiar with it. But from the quick look I took, it's an INCREDIBLY expensive way to do something that is standard with almost all other domain registrars.
The cost of their domains is exorbitantly high ($79/3 years from what I see) plus they're charging an extra $50/yr to be able to do simple domain redirecting. Most registrars charge about $12.00/yr to do all that for a .ca domain.
Sorry, didn't want to muddy the waters, but thought you should know those prices are crazy high.
For specific info on how to do the redirects, you should get register.com's support to help you. You just want to be certain to ask that they show you how to create 301 redirects (only 301 - not 302 or CName or anything else) as I mentioned.
Then to confirm, 24 hours after the redirects have been done, use a header-checking tool to test each of yoursite.ca and www.yoursite.ca. The tool should show a 301 redirect leading to a "200 OK" response for each.
Paul
-
First, I'm going to assume the canonical version of your .com website is www.yoursite.com. This assumes that the URL yoursite.com (no www.) is already 301-redirected to the www version.
In that case, I'd create a page at www.yoursite.com/canada (or even /canada-company-name). On that page, I'd create a "homepage" that is similar in design to your regular homepage, but that contains a whole lot of copy specific to the Canadian market. It should NOT be a direct copy of the regular homepage.
Then, I'd 301 redirect yoursite.ca and www.yoursite.ca to www.yoursite.com/canada
Lastly, I'd put a link "Canadian Customers" (or equivalent, maybe with a small CDN flag icon) somewhere at the top of your www.yoursite.com pages pointing to the /canada page. That way, even when a Canadian customer finds the .com site through search, there's a chance they'll notice the Canadian info.
Paul
-
We are currently using the Premium Web Site Forwarding from Register.com.
Would this still cause a Dup content issue?
Thanks again
-
Sorry - dupe post. There's something wonky going on with Roger's server - returning a page error even though the comment posted.
-
hello
should I just create a custom page on my .com site thats says .ca?and mirrors my .com homepage? Also if i redirect should it be to the xxxxx.com or the www.xxxxxx.com?
thanks so much!
-
Just to be clear - when you say both sites are identical, do you mean that there is actually just one site that will have both the .com and .ca pointing to it?
If so, and as long as you correctly use a 301 redirect to point your .ca to the .com, you won't have any problem with duplicate content.
That's exactly the sort of issue 301 redirects are specifically designed to solve.
Just a tip for useability...
As a Canadian, when I get redirected to a US .com site, I'm often left to wonder whether the US company can actually serve me well in Canada.
You might want to consider pointing the .ca domain to a landing page on the .com site that functions as a "Canadian home page" and includes explanations to potential CDN customers about all the great ways you can take care of them.
- assurance that you ship inexpensively and efficiently to Canada
- whether pricing is listed in US or CDN dollars
- how service is provided to Canadian users if needed
- that your product meets Canadian safety standards, licensing etc if applicable
The landing page can graphically mimic the regular home page, but with enough Canadian-market-specific content to keep it from being a dupe of the regular home page.
Paul
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
-
Redirect typo domains
Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?
Technical SEO | | kuchenchef0 -
Clients domain expired - rankings lost - repurchased domain - what next?
Its only been 10 days and i have repurchased the domain name/ renewed. The who is info, website and contact information is all still the same. However we have lost all rankings and i am hoping that our top rankings come back. Does anyone have experience with such a crappy situation?
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
Subdomain vs Main Domain Penalties
We have a client who's main root.com domain is currently penalized by Google, but the subdomain.root.com is appearing very well. We're stumped - any ideas why?
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0 -
Redirecting blog.<mydomain>.com to www.<mydomain>.com\blog</mydomain></mydomain>
This is more of a technical question than pure SEO per se, but I am guessing that some folks here may have covered this and so I would appreciate any questions. I am moving from a WordPress.com-based blog (hosted on WordPress) to a WordPress installation on my own server (as suggested by folks in another thread here). As part of this I want to move from the format blog.<mydomain>.com to www.mydomain.com\blog. I have installed WordPress on my server and have imported posts from the hosted site to my own server. How should I manage the transition from first format to the second? I have a bunch of links on Facebook, etc that refer to URLs of the blog..com format so it's important that I redirect.</mydomain> I am running DotNetNuke/WordPress on my own IIS/ASP.Net servers. Thanks. Mark
Technical SEO | | MarkWill0 -
Issue with .uk.com domain
hi i have rockshore.uk.com which is not indexing properly. the internal pages do not show up for the text they have on them, or the title tags. the site is on aekmps shops platform. I understand that a .uk.com is not a proper TLD but i think i have a subdomain of .uk.com Can anyone help? thanks
Technical SEO | | Turkey0 -
Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?
For our corporate business level domain, we are exploring using a hyphenated sub-domain foir a project. Something like www.go-figure.extreme.com I thought from a user perspective it seems cluttered. The domain length might also be an issue with the new Algorithm big G has launched in recent past. I know with past experience, hyphenated domains usually take longer to index, as they are used by spammers more frequently and can take longer to get out of the supplementary index. Our company site has over 90 million viewers / year, so our brand is well established and traffic isn't an issue. This is for a corporate level project and I didn't have the answer! Will this work? anyone have any experience testing this. Any thoughts will help! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0 -
Outranking a competitor when their domain name is the keyword
Hi I'd just like to ask the opinion of my fellow members here : We are currently ranking second for a very important keyword and would obviously like the top spot on the SERP - the site that is ranking first has the domain name as the keyword phrase(along with a good amount of quality links from a variety of domains) - now I know it is possible to outrank them since I do remember reading about this in one of Rands posts(I think it was the whole white hat black hat one he posted recently) - bascially we have more domain authority, slightly less links but from double the amount of root domains and a higher page authority too! Does having the keyword as your domain make THAT much of a difference when we are(imo) quite close in terms of great content and link profiles(and all the onpage factors) ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DanHill0
