Using hreflang on multiple domains when one has been penalized
-
Hi,
I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site.
Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new).
I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:-
The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order.
However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues).
So the question is, what should I do? Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?
-
I have conformation directly from Google's John Mueller that this is not a problem and the penalty will NOT pass between domains with hreflang.
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
-
Multiple keywords in one article?
Hi guys! I will be soon getting my article published in local newspaper (online edition) with DA 50. They told me i can choose whatever anchor text I want. The article is about towing business and my keyword is going to be also "towing". Is it smart to add another keyword in the same article (which is similar and is also a money keyword) ? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Suksinho0 -
Local SEO for a business serving multiple small cities
We have a local business that has a showroom in one city, and serve other 5 different small cities (in total 6 small cities). Search volume for the targeted keyword is very low (around 100 each plus minus) with a variety of competition levels. The product is expensive so this justifies the low search volume with a serious user intent.
Local SEO | | Nadiamo44
My question is given the low search volume for each keyword, what would be the best local SEO tactic for this. The website has a DA of 20 with competitors who has similar and higher DAs. Options I am considering: 1. Create unique pages for each location with unique content (no address available so I will have to use a city name postcode)
2. Create pages with the same content (but changing the area of service on the URL, H1 and mention the postcode and the radius of coverage twice in the content) and using a canonical tag to solve the duplicate issue.
In this scenario, I will create the main product pages with the address of the showroom, and mention the area of service covered for the other 5 cities.
3. Given that the 6 cities are part of a greater area, use the greater area to target them all. The keyword of the greater area has a lower search volume than the city keyword. This might work for keywords with low competition but not for ones with high competition levels. Not sure how well search engines will rank the keywords that include the greater area and show the pages for searches in small cities. Any advice on which option to go with or any recommendations for other solutions?0 -
One company, two audiences. Ok to make two sites?
I have researched and researched on this question, and I'm still not satisfied. Most of the answers on the Moz forum and otherwise are all from 2013, as well. So, I thought I'd bring it up again. I have two distinct audiences for a real estate business I'm working with (very different needs and interests): Farm Buyers Residential Buyers My client is wanting to expand their presence in the farm market. Their main competitor is ranking for, more or less, an exact domain name match. They want to spin up a site focused only on farm buyers. Here are the pros/cons in my mind of creating a separate site: Pros: Reaching/targeting a specific audience (better user experience), having domain name with keywords (I won't keyword stuff...promise), a site completely devoted to content regarding farms, a blog completely devoted to farms (we have a content strategy in place) Cons: NAP issues (same address), splitting up domain authority, a bit of brand confusion (though the same logo/brand will be on both sites) In my mind, the pros outweigh the cons. Any ideas on how to address the cons? I could just not include address and phone, but that seems ridiculous...catering to the bots and not the user. Thanks, everyone!
Local SEO | | Gabe_BlueGuru
Gabe2 -
Should I change my domain/brand name?
Hello everyone, Thanks for stopping by to check out my problem and to help shed light on it for myself and hopefully others in a similar boat! As Ive gotten more into this process of SEO and my online business (with the great help of many community members here, many thanks everyone!) I have begun building a wordpress site in prep of canceling my squarespace site (Im a Kauai based wedding photographer) for more SEO value, faster page load time, and more data and plugins to the site. During this time however Ive noticed that my business www.balihaiphoto.com has a lot of confusion/search results and content I think may be leading potential clients in other directions, or even google down the wrong track of what my business is. The reason I suspect this is a restaurant that hosts a lot of weddings, and in turn, wedding photographers blogging about the location (the venue is called Bali Hai and its not located in Hawaii) as well as a reality group here and that Im getting occasional hits on my site for "Bali Wedding photographer" when I'd like to be known/indexed and ranked for "Kauai wedding photographer" and am working on a lot of long tail content to add to the site once its finished up. I feel like Im answering my own question slightly as I feel that I need to change the domain and name to something new, unique, and not attached to anything other than Kauai and Hawaii, but dont know exactly why that may be the best thing to do, or, if it even is the best thing to do? I greatly appreciate any help or elaboration as to why or why not a domain and brand name change would be helpful or not. Many thanks everyone and Aloha! -Jon Gibb
Local SEO | | Jon_Gibb0 -
Schema for Multiple Stores
Our business has 26 stores throughout the UK and the website has a page for each of these that includes contact information, a Google map, a form etc. I was going to add some LD-JSON Schema to all of my pages so that Google would display my social profiles in the SERPS: My problem with this is that I'm worrying my store pages may have a conflict with the data that it is pulling from the individual Google Business Pages that each store has set up. Should I only include the social profile Schema on the home page of my website or could I include this on every page except my store pages - and on these, display "LocalBusiness" Schema? I just don't want to do anything that will confuse Google!
Local SEO | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Lots of [keyword]in[city].com domains - what to do?
A client of mine had purchased a lot of domains. They all start with the same keyword following by "in" following by a cities name. The cities are all the cities around their location. They had the pages set up to all look the same with very small differences in content. A bunch of duplicate content. All of them have a DA of 8 and PA of 19. There are 35 of them total. They get roughly 30-60 hits a month each but it's mostly all spam. The idea was for users to type in [keyword] in [city] in Google and these websites show up. A competitor of my clients had done something similar which was working for them. The main website (separate of these) gets ~1500 visits per month of non spam traffic and gets ~10 referrals from these websites. What should be done with these domains? Chalk it off as a bad idea and have them 301 to the main website until they expire? Or can they be changed into something useful? If so, how? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Note: I did search for this similar topic but it was hard to search it out and I did not find an answer. Thanks!
Local SEO | | RedKeyDesigns0 -
What is The Best Way to Rank in Multiple Countries?
Hi, I have a client that would like to rank in google.ie as well as .co.uk and in the middle east and possibly other parts of Europe. What is the best way to go about this? Would a new domain for each country be best and hosted in that specific country or is there a way to do this with one site? Bearing in mind that SEO will need to be done to rank in each country. Many Thanks.
Local SEO | | WSIDW0 -
SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages? If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?) Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign! Thanks
Local SEO | | EdwardoUK0