How do I geo-target continents & avoid duplicate content?
-
Hi everyone,
We have a website which will have content tailored for a few locations:
USA: www.site.com
Europe EN: www.site.com/eu
Canada FR: www.site.com/fr-caLink hreflang and the GWT option are designed for countries. I expect a fair amount of duplicate content; the only differences will be in product selection and prices.
What are my options to tell Google that it should serve www.site.com/eu in Europe instead of www.site.com? We are not targeting a particular country on that continent.
Thanks!
-
Moz most definitively need a "give a beer" feature!! Thanks for the in-depth response. We'll also work on building "local" links as you suggest.
We've since changed the structure of the site to :
USA/Canada: www.site.com
Europe EN: www.site.com/en_gb/
Europe FR: www.site.com/fr_fr/
Canada FR: www.site.com/fr/That way we can use hreflang and avoid duplicate content. In your experience, will Google serve www.site.com/fr_fr/ instead of www.site.com/fr/ to Belgium and Switzerland? Will UK and Ireland see www.site.com or www.site.com/en_gb/ ?
Thanks a lot for the answer!
-
Hi there,
As Marcus mentioned before, at the moment geographical targeting is country based, not per continent, so you're correct: hreflang works for languages or / and countries and the geotarget option in Google Webmaster Tools (when you're not using a ccTLD) is only for countries.
So there are really two alternatives: language targeting (although each language is different in each country) or country targeting (which is the ideal in order to connect with each audience, localizing the content as maximum and leveraging all types of local characteristics).
With language targeting you will avoid having content duplication issues (since it will be only one English or one Spanish version), nonetheless, as I mentioned, it can be tricky: The Spanish spoken in Spain is different than the one from Mexico and each other Latin American country. Seasonality and currency are different. People's culture, tastes and local characteristics too. So language based versions might serve to have a "generic" approach to these audience but not really targeting them as specific markets.
On the other hand with country targeting if you have two English versions you can refer each one to the appropriate country with hreflang, ccTLDs (if you use a generic domain, then with the geotarget option in Google Webmaster tool) and then by doing local link building focused on each country, to enhance the popularity of each version there. This would be the recommended approach. If you can't enable many countries because of resources restrictions then start with the most important ones.
More over, from what you mention about targeting Europe as a whole, even if you enable a domain of the type: www.yourbrand.eu for Europe, it is likely to be treated as a generic domain as Google specifies here, and then inside this domain what you would really have --as I understand from your description-- are language versions targeting Europe in General:
- www.yourbrand.eu/ in English (UK, Ireland, etc.)
- www.yourbrand.eu/fr/ in French (In France, Belgium, Switzerland)
- www.yourbrand.eu/es/ in Spanish
- www.yourbrand.eu/de/ in German (for Germany, Switzerland or Austria)
The issue comes when you have the same content in English for your American audience in www.yourbrand.com or in Spanish (for Spanish speakers in the US) in www.yourbrand.com/es/ that could cause a content duplication issue with www.yourbrand.eu/ and www.yourbrand.eu/es/.
If this is the scenario, then the best you can do is to differentiate the content, changing them by giving signals that one is targeting the US audience and the other, well, what would be English speakers in Europe. But again, there's no real support or straight-forward solution for this scenario since beyond what Google supports, is not "natural" or the best alternative from an "international audience targeting" perspective.
If you have any other information that you think would be relevant to give you additional recommendations please let me know.
I hope this helps!
-
Hey Axial
As far as I am aware there is no option to target regions like Europe and to do this in webmaster tools you will need to create a folder for each country you are looking to target within Europe.
Obviously, there are lots of different languages across Europe so in an ideal world, you will want a version geotargeted to each country in the correct language. If you want to be really fancy you will want a version with english and the relevant countries language.
So, for spain as an example, targeting Spanish and English the hreflang would be set as "ES-es" and "ES-en" (Spain-Spanish and Spain-English). Directories could be matched /es-es & /es-en.
Not an answer as such but as far as I am aware, Europe is not targetable in a single folder via webmaster tools so you are going to have to work with what's available.
Hope that helps
Marcus
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
-
User Intent - Office Chairs & Content Writing
Hi I'm trying to look for ideas for content on office chairs. Any ideas on where to start with user intent for this type of search query? I'm using answer the public to gather some ideas. Some are good ideas, but I can't actually find any search volume for the phrase so then I'm unsure whether to devote time to writing something. Surely most people want to just find a supplier, buy the chair & they don't want a huge informational piece how to buy a chair. Our competitors are the likes of amazon, and a load of other huge companies with high DA - so I'm looking at types of content we can write, people are interested in reading about chairs, which is less competitive..I'm not sure that exists... Any help is appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate ecommerce sites, SEO implications & others?
We have an established eCom site built out with custom php, dedicated SERPs, traffic, etc.. The question has arisen on how to extend commerce on social and we have found a solution with Shopify. In order to take advantage of this, we'd need to build out a completely new site in Shopify and would have to have the site live in order to have storefronts on Pinterest and Twitter. Aside from the obvious problem with having two databases, merchant processing, etc, does anyone know whether there are SEO implications to having two live sites with duplicate products? Could we just disavow a Shopify store in Webmaster Tools? Any other thoughts or suggestions? TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PAC31350 -
Tools to scan entire site for duplicate content?
HI guys, Just wondering if anyone knows of any tools to scan a site for duplicate content (with other sites on the web). Looking to quickly identify product pages containing duplicate content/duplicate product descriptions for E-commerce based websites. I know copy scape can which can check up to 10,000 pages in a single operation with Batch Search. But just wondering if there is anything else on the market i should consider looking at? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
Will merging sites create a duplicate content penalty?
I have 2 sites that would be better suited being merged and creating a more authoritative site. Basically I'de like to merge site A in to site B. If I add new pages from site A to Site B and create 301 redirects for those pages on site A to the new pages on Site B is that the best way to go about it? As the pages are already indexed would this create any duplicate content issue or would the redirect solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boballanjones0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Copying my Facebook content to website considered duplicate content?
I write career advice on Facebook on a daily basis. On my homepage users can see the most recent 4-5 feeds (using FB social media plugin). I am thinking to create a page on my website where visitors can see all my previous FB feeds. Would this be considered duplicate content if I copy paste the info, but if I use a Facebook social media plugin then it is not considered duplicate content? I am working on increasing content on my website and feel incorporating FB feeds would make sense. thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0