International hreflang - will this handle duplicate content?
-
The title says it all - if i have duplicate content on my US and UK website, will adding the hreflang tag help google figure out that they are duplicate for a reason and avoid any penalties?
-
hreflang and geo-targeting are in fact two different things.
If you have exactly the same content, no changes for the regional variations in the language, hreflang is not intended for that.
Why do you have two sets of pages that are the same? If you have the same content on .com with no geo-targeting, then Google is going to offer up the original content on .com rather than /lu because you never changed the content in any way to target Luxembourg. Had you changed the content to translate or really geo-targeted the content to that audience, I think the situation would be different.
Check my tool here, answer the questions and see what is right for your situation. Then follow the instructions at the end.
-
After reading this thread, I have decided to implement this solution in order to target multiple countries. In my case France and Luxembourg.
My website URL uses a gTLD such as www.example.com. The content is in French.
I have duplicated all pages and blog posts in a subfolder /lu and I have used the hreflang markup to indicate that the content is either in fr-lu or fr-fr.
In the Google WebMaster Tools, I have geo-targeted the /lu subfolder to Luxembourg. For the main domain I have not targeted any country.
After a few days, my website started ranking much better on google.lu than it used to be. It lasted a month or so, but today www.example.com/lu/ has lost dozens of positions for my keywords of interest. In fact www.example.com ranks #20 on google.lu and seems to have replaced www.example.com/lu/ which ranked #12 and is now nowhere to be found....
I have no idea why this happened. Like I said the content is indeed duplicated, but I have used hreflang to make it clear that I'm targeting a specific country.
What should I do ?
-
Thanks Kate! This is really helpful. I guess we will go with no hreflang tag, and just .com and .co.uk sites
-
Tommy is getting to the point but things are still very confusing when it comes to international.
Can you go check out this flow chart, see what is best for your business, and then let me know? http://www.distilled.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/International-Search-Strategy-Guide.pdf
That should answer most of your implementation questions as well, but I want to make sure it make sense. So check it out first and let me know.
But if what I am assuming is the case that you have geo-targeted sites and there is no translation going on within the geotargeted sites (.com and .co.uk), then HREFLANG is not needed. What I mean by translation isn't happening in the site is that the .com (US) site isn't translated to Spanish or any other language. And the same in the UK. If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary.
Let me know what you're trying to do with geo-targeting and international strategy and I can help better answer your question.
-
HI Alice,
Just want to confirm whether your US and UK site is under the same domain or different domain. If it is different domain, the ccTLD domain (.com and .co.uk) should've solved the issue since Google will understand that each domain is targeting the different location. However, both website are under same domain (using subdomain or directories) then the hreflang tag will solve the issue. This tell Google that the site with hreflang="en-us is targeting US and the other to UK.
Hope this can help a bit
-
Didn't know about that last tag!
haha you and Lesley are giving me 2 different answers, so I'm even more confused!
Hopefully more people can chip in their comments?
-
Yea we are currently working on producing different content, including complete separate content + converting US to UK english, but there are some pages where duplicates are unavoidable.
I also thought this tag was not to handle duplicate content at all, but when you think about it more that is essentially what it is doing - it exists for websites that have the exact same content in 2 separate languages. It's just a bit confusing when you have US and UK, since the language is the same, but there are still separate hreflag tags for them...
-
I think hreflang is intended for your very situation. Check out Google's guidelines which will very much confirm this. What you should do is reference both the UK and US URL on both versions of the content, so for example you would add this to both versions.
If you intend to have a default 'en' version which doesn't target any specific locale then you might want to add as well.
Ideally, of course, as Lesley suggests, you should provide content that is unique in each locale, but resource-wise this is not always possible and that is why hreflang will help you in this instance and will help avoid duplicate issues. In theory your US URL should appear in Google.com and your UK URL should appear in Google.co.uk, but it can take a while for Google to catch up and reflect this in SERPs.
-
From my understanding, that is not what that tag is for. You can read more about it here, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html
As a suggestion, I would recommend having different content. Just because they both speak english, it does not mean that they speak the same flavor of english. If you can change the content enough to suit the people in the UK I think you will have better overall results.
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
-
International SEO Setuo
Hi Guys i have a client who is looking to be found in multiple English speaking countries I.e .co.uk, .com and .com.au At first I advised they would need unique content for each to avoid duplication but then the client showed me this site http://welleco.com/ this is setup via shopify on a multisite. All the sites have the same content and are all indexed. My question is can this be done in WordPress? Via something like WPML. And would it need to have seperte hosting and a seperate site or can this be done by something like IP redirect. Can someone advise if this is good practice or maybe suffer other ways? Thanks in advance.
International SEO | | nezona1 -
International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets
Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David
International SEO | | Davide19840 -
Targeting International Markets on the Web
Hello Moz community, I have a popular news website that we are looking to target multiple countries (all English first). So I know (1) a hosting provided (ip address) in that country and (2) a target extension (.co.uk) will help us. Am I missing anything else that can help when targeting international markets? What I'm struggling with is the duplicate content. I can't copy the content over to the extension because of the bad practice of duplicate content. Is it possible to have the same content on both websites and let Google know that it lives at the .com extension? If so, would those websites containing duplicate content still rank? And we would want to target different languages later (for example Spanish). This would be different content because it is in a different language, correct? Thanks for your help Moz community! Cole
International SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Do I have duplicate content issues to be worried about?
Hey guys, We built a website http://www.cylon.com/ targeting different regions but with the same English langauage (Ireland, England and America). The content for the most part is the same set up on 3 different subfolders. http://www.cylon.com/ - Targeting United States in WMT http://www.cylon.com/ie - Targeting Ireland in WMT http://www.cylon.com/uk - Targeting UK in WMT Do I have duplicate content issues to be worried about? If so, how do I get around this issue? Also is there anyway of finding out if Google have in some way penalised these pages for having the same content on other pages trageting different Countries? I have not received any messages from Google in WMT saying there is duplicate so I'm not sure if this is an issue. Thanks Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0 -
Duplicate content international homepage
Hi, We have a website which is in english and dutch language. Our website has the following structure www.eurocottage.com:
International SEO | | Bram76
Dutch or English language ones the user has set his language in a cookie. www.eurocottage.com/nl/ :
Dutch language www.eurocottage.com/en/:
English language The .com and the eurocottage.com/nl/ and eurocottage.com have according to Google duplicate content because they are initial both in Dutch. What would be the best strategy to fix this problem? Thanks, Bram0 -
International SEO Question with regards to Sub Folders in Webmaster Tools
So, we have a website in 18 or so different languages. bluewidgets.com/br bluewidgets.com/cn etc I have added each sub folder in Google Webmaster Tools and 'pointed' them to be at their respective geographic specific. However, the United States version of the website is sitting on the root domain. Is there any issue with me pointing the root domain at United States Google, considering there are 18 sub folders already pointed at different regions?
International SEO | | LukeyJamo0 -
CcTLD and duplicate content
Hello people, I would like some help with this question... I am building 2 websites www.domain.com.ec and www.domain.com , both on the same languages, and same content, but the domain.com.ec will show a different price for local ecommerce and focus to target Ecuador... the www.domain.com will sell on all the other spanish languages countries with a fob price... So my question ... is there any way to fail into the duplicate content on the google eyes? What could be the best way to do it? Using the multistore option, with different cctld could change anything? Thank you guys
International SEO | | lans27870 -
Anchor text for international SEO
HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!
International SEO | | Turkey0