SEO issues with IP based content delivery
-
Hi,
I have two websites say website A and Website B. The website A is set up for the UK audience and the website B is set up for the US audience. Both websites sell same products with some products and offers not available in either country. Website A can't be accessed if you are in US. Similarly website B can't be accessed if you are in UK. This was a decision made by the client long time ago as they don’t want to offer promotions etc in the US and therefore don’t want the US audience to be able to purchase items from the UK site.
Now the problem is both the websites have same description for the common products they sell.Search engine spiders tend to enter a site from a variety of different IP addresses/locations. So while a UK visitor will not be able to access the US version of the site and vice versa, a crawler can. Now i have following options with me:
1. Write a different product descriptions for US website to keep both the US and UK versions of the site in the Google Index for the foreseeable future. But this is going to be time consuming and expensive option as there are several hundred products which are common to both sites.
2. Use a single website to target both US and UK audience and make the promotions available only to the UK audience. There is one issue here. Website A address ends with '.co.uk' and website B has different name and ends with .com. So website A can't be used for the US audience. Also website A is older and more authoritative than the new website B. Also website A is pretty popular among UK audience with the .co.uk address. So website B can't be used to target the UK audience.
3. You tell me
-
Just a thought as well to add to what everyone else said. Make sure you go into your Google webmasters and tell Google what country you want them to rank up for. I have had odd instances when a site with a co.uk extension will still rank up in the US for terms even though I don't want it to. So I advise you to set them.
Have a nice day.
-
normally I would have said keep only one site but in understanding what you've said you need to differentiate the sites substantially not just wording. Brandon differently to be different the whole reason the customer wants them not be the same is because the audience is not the same I'm from Germany I do understand the difference between being pitch something in Germany and in the United States where I am now and I do notice my own behavior patterns to those I'm far more likely to buy something with the .de as I know which German I know there will be no issues when I'm in the United States I am far more likely to purchase something with the .com TDL as I know I will not have problems hopefully. Differentiate the sites is much as you can one of them sounds like the US site should be rewritten.
I hope I've helped you,
Thomas Von Zickell
-
You have the option to show different content depending on users location. If you use PHP on your site you can use PHP GEOIP functions.
You can get your site personalised by country here: http://www.maxmind.com/en/geolocation_landing
-
Great response and I agree with Big. Large e-commerce sites with thousands of SKUs that often only have tiny difference from one product to the next are bound to have many similar product descriptions. Yes, Amazon is a perfect example. Google is smart enoug to know if what you are doing with your two sites is "an attempt to get 2 bites of the cherry." It's pretty clear that you are trying to serve the most appropriate content to the most appropriate audience. Content management would be easier with everything all on one site, but with the history of these sites, it's probably best to keep them as they are. INow, if you had two domains in either the US or UK that had all the same identical product pages, that would be an issue.
-
Well what i would do its very simple, just have it all in one site and block ip's from user in the US to UK and the other way around.
so you have on your site 2 flags US and UK and if a user from a UK try to go to US site you show a message that that this products not available that say " this option not available from your location" (i am not a copy writer so use your own words) or just block the prices for ip from a different country.
hope that help
-
Oh yeah!
Thanks keri, I really din't check the date
-
Hi Khem,
This question is over a year old. Your best bet is to start a new thread with just this question. Thanks!
-
I would suggest to run only one web site and then use the visitors IP address to insert relevant content into the site. So the web site content will change according to where the visitor comes from.
Creating multiple domains in same language with identical content might attract penalty.
Or else, do whatever you're thinking but ensure to keep the content unique, even if you're using IP delivery.
| |
-
So, you mean to say that being in a same industry, I can copy the whole content of any UK website and then can restrict UK people from accessing my website, as my target audience is in US.
Please advice
-
If you keep the two sites separate would you will be penalized by Google for having duplicate content? if this is the case how should you deal with this?
-
Personally i would simply redirect your visitors to the proper web site associated through their IP address. There a few of server side tools or plugins if you're using a blog to change the entire sites title and body content to reflect the differences between sites at a click of a button.
affportal.com has many such tools and insights to help you with this.
hope this helps.
-
I say keep them separate. The ccTLD (.co.uk - clearly shows geographic relevance) - now the .com, which is a global TLD can be targeted/biased to the USA by using theGeographic target in Google Webmasters (the .co.uk is already set to UK and cannot be set to point to another country - only 'unlisted'.)
Furthermore, I wouldn't want to lose any benefits of the aged and established .co.uk by merging it with the .com. You will never get 100% of the link juice back with 301 redirects - maybe 90% at best and after some weeks have passed and then when you consider you are already well establised with your .co.uk site you would be mad to mess with it without VERY GOOD REASON!
Can't you just not restrict shipping to the US on the UK site? I have 2 ecommerce sites setup this way (one.co.uk and one .com - (which operates on a dropship basis only - as we are UK based)
With regards to the duplicate content issue - I would look at the fact that Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com have hundreds of thousands of product pages with the same/VERY similar content (descriptions etc) - and last time I check they were ranking pretty well ;o) - without the need to block users from certain locations - (they do of course pickup your IP address instead and SUGGEST(with a big flag and arrows that you visit the UK site instead when you select Amazon.com site from the UK) - They still restrict shipping of certain items should you persist and try and order anyway.
Your prices will also differ between £ and $ - as will the converted price - another clear indication that this isn't an attempt to get 2 bites of the cherry.
I would also move the .com site to a US based server too - as this helps with ranking anyway (server/website speed and location are factors)
Maybe bung a flag in your header graphics to further denote your geo-targeting?
Changing the spelling of UK/US variants is sensible anyway - though difficult to research initially - I spent some time battling between ize and ise!
Keep the .Co.Uk and .Com separate - state that you do not ship to the US from the UK site - restrict purchases accordingly (by shipping address). That should make it clear enough - hope that helps!
-
Hi Devaki,
Are you still deciding what to do here, or have you gone ahead and made a decision? Let us know if we can help you out anymore, or tell us what your decision was -- we'd be interested to hear what choice was made and how it's worked out.
Thanks!
-
Duplicate content shouldn't be an issue with regards maintaining a US and UK site, the search engines will decide what version to show. Admittedly I'm not 100% convinced the are perfect at doing this at the moment, but confident enough I would do it myself in this case, so don't worry about rewriting all your content (though remember UK and US are one nation divided by a single language).
As a precaution you could georoute customers by IP to either or, but remember googlebot will probably crawl from a US address so you might want to let theirs passed.
To be honest unless you have a reason to do it I wouldn't change the set up you currently have. Bringing them under one domain is going to be awkward (though possible) to show geospecific content and as I mentioned I don't believe you even need to rewrite the content.
Just build UK links to the .co.uk site and you should be alright for the most part.
Is there a particular reason you feel you need to change the set-up?
-
Sorry, I must not be awake. What is the problem? You have two sites with common products and you only offer certain promotions in the UK on the UK ccTLD (country code top level domain). Are these promos showing up on the US site?
-
You have a few options.
You could build out one website and whenever a visitor comes from a specific country you could show that visitor separate pieces of the site, different products, etc... but this is not easily done and is a nightmare to manage.
You can keep the two separate websites and focus on rewriting the content. This is my first option, if it were me. You have two websites that are in separate countries selling products that are the same but with different offers, discounts, currencies, etc... so this makes the most sense to have a clear line of separation. However, it shouldn't be too difficult to hire a freelancer writer to go through one of the websites and rewrite the content. Make it more relevant to that countries users, add in videos, helpful information, etc... you only have to rewrite content for one of the sites, that would make sure they are not full of dupe content. Then, you could down the road hire the same writer to optimize the content for the other website but approach it with different content that is just as relevant and you should have a win-win-win situation.
Does that make sense?
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
-
I am looking for an SEO strategy
I am looking for an SEO strategy, a step by step procedure to follow to rank my website https://infinitelabz.com . Can somebody help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KHsdhkfn0 -
Infinite scrolling issue?
Hi Guys, Reviewing this E-commerce page - https://tinyurl.com/ybjjwr65 Based on this Google article: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html It mentions: Make sure that you or your content management system produces a paginated series (component pages) to go along with your infinite scroll. How would you check this, is there a tool to conduct this test? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayl870 -
Scraped content ranking above the original source content in Google.
I need insights on how “scraped” content (exact copy-pasted version) rank above the original content in Google. 4 original, in-depth articles published by my client (an online publisher) are republished by another company (which happens to be briefly mentioned in all four of those articles). We reckon the articles were re-published at least a day or two after the original articles were published (exact gap is not known). We find that all four of the “copied” articles rank at the top of Google search results whereas the original content i.e. my client website does not show up in the even in the top 50 or 60 results. We have looked at numerous factors such as Domain authority, Page authority, in-bound links to both the original source as well as the URLs of the copied pages, social metrics etc. All of the metrics, as shown by tools like Moz, are better for the source website than for the re-publisher. We have also compared results in different geographies to see if any geographical bias was affecting results, reason being our client’s website is hosted in the UK and the ‘re-publisher’ is from another country--- but we found the same results. We are also not aware of any manual actions taken against our client website (at least based on messages on Search Console). Any other factors that can explain this serious anomaly--- which seems to be a disincentive for somebody creating highly relevant original content. We recognize that our client has the option to submit a ‘Scraper Content’ form to Google--- but we are less keen to go down that route and more keen to understand why this problem could arise in the first place. Please suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ontarget-media0 -
Duplicate content based on filters
Hi Community, There have probably been a few answers to this and I have more or less made up my mind about it but would like to pose the question or as that you post a link to the correct article for this please. I have a travel site with multiple accommodations (for example), obviously there are many filter to try find exactly what you want, youcan sort by region, city, rating, price, type of accommodation (hotel, guest house, etc.). This all leads to one invevitable conclusion, many of the results would be the same. My question is how would you handle this? Via a rel canonical to the main categories (such as region or town) thus making it the successor, or no follow all the sub-category pages, thereby not allowing any search to reach deeper in. Thanks for the time and effort.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
How would you structure this content?
We have a site where we write about our son who was born with Down syndrome. I had a question regarding some content I'm trying to create and structure and hoping you guys can point me in the right direction. One of the things we are often asked by new parents is what toys we suggest for people to buy for their child with Down syndrome, or as gifts for a friend who has a child with Down syndrome. So I'd like to write some posts that suggest great toys for each year of a kids life (and continue that as Noah grows.) However, there are some variations of key words that I would like to rank for as well and it gets a little messy, which is where I need the help. For example for each year I could have a post titled: Top Ten (I could also change out top ten for Best, etc..)Toys For A One Year Old with Down Syndr Top Ten Christmas Gift Ideas For A One Year Old With Down Syndrome Top Ten Birthday Gift Ideas For a One Year Old With D.S. Top Ten Learning Toys For A One Year Old With D.S. Top Ten Toys Under 25 Dollars For A One Year Old with DS Top Ten Developmental Toys for a One Year Old With DS Top Ten Fisher Price Toys for a child with ds Best Light Up Toys For a one year old with ds best muscial toys for a one year old with ds I could also think of other variations as well. Also I can make each of these with the various ages. 2 year old, 3 year old, etc... So I'm not sure what the best way to go is. I could easily have a ton of content that is all virtually the same (birthday gifts / christmas gifts..although I could suggest different toys) so I'd have a ton of different toys pages trying to rank for one term each that is good for google searchers but probably not so great for folks coming to my site as I would have toy pages scattered all over the site. I also don't know how landing pages would fit in to all of this. Would I want a "Down Syndrome Toy Guide" landing page, or "Down Syndrome Gift Guide" ... or both...or something else, and then link all of those other pages on that page? I have a few pages on my site now that I wrote before I started to think about all the different combinations I wanted to rank for: http://noahsdad.com/gift-ideas-down-syndrome/ and http://noahsdad.com/best-fisher-price-learning-toys/ I'm open to any feedback you guys may have on this. I'd also like to do some posts on "Down Syndrome Books" and hope to use the same info that you guys give me and apply to books. (Therapy books, touch and feel books, resource books, new parents books, etc..) Hoping some folks chime in as your help would really be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
Victim of negative SEO
Hello, I'm one of those people that got the "unnatural links" message from google. Since i run my site from the very first day and always was a one man business i know all the ins and outs of the website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Henkiepenkie
Basicly i have never ever used a seo company to submit my site anywhere.
Never ever i used any shady tactic to get better ranks.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc. So. After i got notified in webmaster tools i started digging into a list (provided by webmaster tools) to find out why i got this message (meanwhile i lost 75% of my se traffic in past 3 months) After searching for hours i found out that in the past 2 / 3 months my site has been spammed on about 150 forums (completely dead forums with nothing but spam on it) There was no logic at all since my site got linked with the most ridiculous and unlogical word phrases.
My site is adult related and all spam links contained word phrases like "bangladesh mobile" or "rock girl" or "animal abuse" or "ringtones" etc etc. if i ever would be so stupid to start spamming my 7 year old strong business i would at least use titles that would make sence. anyway.
I can't do nothing about these forums, i don't own them, i can't erase them and if there are any owners, they simply don't respond.
I made a list of all the forums and send it to google but the only response they come up with is "there are still unnatural links". I hardly believe they did anything with that list i send them. I don't know what else i can do and was hoping that somebody could advice me on what to do here besides sending google messages on a daily base. cheers0 -
SEO Strategy for Microsite
I am working on a project to build a microsite of sorts that will represent a joint program between two large organizations with established web presences and strong domains. Each of the organizations has dedicated sections on their sites speaking to the program, but the leadership has decided the joint program deserves it's own site with dedicated content. The two larger sites perform very well for SEO, and I don't necessarily want to jeopordize thir rankings by delivering content that competes directly with them. So I am doing some keyword research to find some opportunities that will alllow me to use the new site to target keywords not yet being captialized by the larger sites. My grand scheme is to have the three sites targeting the broadest array of keywords possible, thus maximizing exposure and avoiding competition. Here is the rub: the content between the three sites will be different but very similar, and there will be plenty of cross linking, especially from the existing sites to the new site, as we grow the brand of the joint program. I'm curious to here some expert opinions on what the puitfalls of the strategy are and what are some of the things I can do to avoid falling in the black hat category - I recognize that proliferating sites around a single topic and cross linking them is black hat. The organizations simply want to build a brand around a joint program and we are striggling to do that without a dedicated website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1