Exact Copy of website
-
We have a client who has the exact copy of his site twice (so three identical sites) in a com.au , .com .co.uk
all the sites seem to be the same, cached at different times by Google- ranking is ok on main site which we are working on....Any thoughts?
-
You might want to get some rel="alternate" hreflang="x" attribution on those different domains to be safe. Especially if you are (you should be) using localised spelling for each country.
See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
From above link, scenario where
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
is recommended:"Your pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but the content has small regional variations. For example, you might have English-language content targeted at readers in the US, GB, and Ireland."
-
It is okay to have identical content as long as Google is informed that you are targeting different markets. For instance it would be fine if I am targeting with Google Webmaster tools the United States and using a .com I could than run the same content on a .co.uk in the United Kingdom the same goes for Australia with .co.au running
Here is some more information
I hope I have been of help,
Thomas
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
-
Migrating to a tag-driven global website - Need opinions!
We currently have a global site that is set up this way: Subfolders to designate countries. Content in same language is re-published on other country websites. Since we are re-launching at the end of the year, we are doing away with re-publishing content on different country sites and will just maintain a single copy of our content (to be populated on different pages using content tags). We are planning on doing this so that there is no need to apply href-lang tags on our content. My questions: Is maintaining just a single instance of an article good for a global website? What are the possible complications that may come up from this approach? Since there is only one version of the article that is being indexed, is a rel-canonical tag even needed? Should href-lang tag still be applied to high level pages (homepage, etc) to ensure that the correct homepage shows up in the appropriate geography? This question is quite long, so any feedback will be helpful. Thanks!
International SEO | | marshdigitalmarketing0 -
URL structure of international hotel website
Hai all, Question about URL structure of international hotel website in Amsterdam: hotelcitadel.nl. Some information: - Target group are mainly english speaking guests from UK and US. Besides that guests from the Netherlands and some other countries. - Website in 6 languages. - No geo-targetting; just language targetting with hreflang annotations. Current situation: hotelcitadel.nl = dutch language version and hotelcitadel.nl/en = english language version We are thinking about changing this to: hotelcitadel.nl would become english version and hotelcitadel.nl/nl would become the dutch version. Reason: root domain hotelcitadel.nl has by far the most links,and making the root domain the english version could help the rankings in english speaking countries like UK and US. What do you think, would this be a wise idea? Regards, Maurice
International SEO | | mlehr0 -
'Mini' versions of our website for overseas markets. Does it matter?
Hi Guys. I work for an e-commerce site called TOAD Diaries, we make bespoke diaries and journals. In essence we allow people to design their own diary online, then we make it and send it. We have already sold some products to poeple in many European countries, (Malta, France, Germany) but we want to have a better online presence for those overseas markets. So….. We're want to do an overseas ‘test case’, to see if we can sell more products in Europe. Out thinking is this: We’ll buy a subdomain for a specific country. Then we’ll then build a ‘mini’ version of our site in the appropriate language. This be a country specific landing page with links to our ‘design your own diary’ pages, basket and checkout. All in the language we’re targeting. Question: Will having such a small number of pages in the targeted countries language effect out ability to rank well? It will be maybe 10 – 15 pages in size. Or is it much more to do with on page optimization and quality backlinks? i.e) the site's size has no impact. What other factors should we consider when trying to rank well in other European countries? Many thanks in advance.
International SEO | | isaac6630 -
Sitemap for multilanguage website
Hello sorry silly question but prefer to be sure 🙂 I have an international website with different subfolders .com/es .com .com/fr etc All of them have independant sitemap, but i'd like to add in .com/robot.txt a sitemap with language. Do you know how I can do this ? Tks a lot !
International SEO | | AymanH0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
Hello, We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website. Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language. These are the languages we target: French – FRANCE French – SWITZERLAND French – BELGIUM Italian – ITALY Italian – SWITZERLAND German – GERMANY German – SWITZERLAND German – AUSTRIA Spanish – SPAIN Spanish – COLOMBIA Spanish – PANAMA Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC Swedish – SWEDEN Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS English – UK English – INTERNATIONAL The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
The questions : Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language? Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all? Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs? Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market? Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place? Looking forward to your feedback. Best wishes, Maëlle0 -
Rel alternate use for multi regional website with english language and same content
I have a website targeting multi language and multi regional users. For example, my main site is www.abcd.com which is in English and targeting US. I have the same content in English which is targeting UK and India with www.uk.abcd.com and www.india.abcd.com. I want to avoid content duplication and help search engines to show the right pages on the country level searches. I have researched a bit and have come to conclusion of using re alternate tag. Can someone help me with how to place the codes for the same. Many thanks Mozers!
International SEO | | HiteshBharucha0 -
Intentional redirect for international visitors to a website
We are doing PPC for a new client, and using Clicktale to improve conversion rates. However, Clicktale won't work because the client does not want international visitors looking at their website (competitive reasons! - yeah don't get me started...). They have a redirect on for all international visitors which points to a "coming soon..." page Are there any SEO implications on traffic in their own country (they currently do rank for terms)? I'd like to go back with a strong case for them removing any international redirect. Thank You
International SEO | | CleverClicks0 -
Multilingual newspaper website
Hello all. This is my first post to seomoz. My group is in the process of creating a website for a newspaper client which will have stories in two languages Spanish and English. Basically visitors will receive the Spanish version and have an option to read the story in english. I have never optimized a website for multi-languages/foreign languages. The newspaper is located in the USA so I'm not sure how this is going to work, which is were you come in. They would like to show up in both Google.com and Spanish versions of Google. My questions are: Do I need to worry about ranking for both versions? How should I go about optimizing the website for multiple languages? How do I need to configure my pages to be indexed so duplication is not an issue? (Canonical URL Tag?) Do I need to use special tags besides the news Google news tags for index, etc? I have more questions but as you can see I'm looking for a starting point on how I should apply my knowledge of english only websites to a website that has the same content just in different languages. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | cubictulsa0