Website Domains, Geographical targeting and Duplicate Content
-
My colleagues in Holland have 2 websites. I've copied and pasted their question - my comments are at the bottom
"www.ancoferwaldram.nl with NL, EN and FR language
www.ancoferwaldram.com with only EN language
The EN versions Google sees as “duplicate content” so we have to get rid of that.
I think we better use 1 website:
www.ancoferwaldram.com with NL, EN, FR and maybe other languages and deactivate www.ancoferwaldram.nl
Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with only the NL language?
Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with direct links to www.ancoferwaldram.com and no content?"
The focus is to get the site to rank in Non-eu countries for export. So given the .nl has higher DA (though only about 15) would it be better to have seperate .fr, .be, .com sites for specific languages and geo targeting. Or would it be better to keep everything on the same site? If so which domain?
i assume that the duplicate content can be resolved by stating which is the canonical version, once the domain strategy is resolved
welcome any thoughts here.
-
Hello
I've worked on a big project like this. The best option is to go for TLD, but it's ususally not possible. In your case what I do recommend is
- Get .com as the main domain
- Create folder with language option if you feel it'll make a difference /en-us /nl-de otherwise just keep /[language]
We used it on ibremarketing.com and so far I'm very happy of the results !
-
To me, this depends on a couple factors. How much effort can go towards this project, and is the content essentially the same, or does it vary per country.
If the content varies, and there is enough manpower to manage multiple sites in multiple languages, then have separate websites optimized for their unique content in their respective domains.
If the opposite is true, keep it all in one domain and use the /en, /fr, etc language settings afterwards. Obviously monitor anything that could be flagged as duplicate and use canonical accordingly. Keep in mind it could take more effort to get that site ranking around the world. That's my $0.02 at least, hope it helps
-
If I would be in the similar situation I will use the basics and go from there. Here are some of the basic, I would keep in mind:
- Country level domain is always difficult to rank in other countries. For example, if you have a website with .co.uk domain, it will be difficult for this domain to rank on Google.com (US).
- Country level domains are easier to rank on its particular country. If you website is .fr, its relatively easier to rank on Google FR as compare to a website that have a domain with some other TLD.
Keeping the above basics in mind, here are the options I have:
- If I need one website deal with everything, then it’s better to have a general domain like .com instead of a country level domain so that it has a relatively better chance to rank in non-eu countries.
- If we can afford and manage multiple website, country specific TLD will be easier to rank in those countries but in that case we have to limit our self to countries.
The options are at the front of you, now idea is to make a choice and go from there accordingly.
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
-
Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
Webmaster tools International Targeting
Hello there, If we have country specific websites such as: usa.domain.com (For the US) uk.domain.com (For the UK) fr.domain.com (For France) Should each of the above sub-domains be set up separately in webmaster tools? With "target users in" for each of the specific countries? Thanks
International SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Help targeting the USA in Search
I believe I've properly targeted, and told Google that our website absoluteautomation.com is aimed at US residents, while the .ca domain targets Canadian. However our .com domain routinely appears above our .ca when searching in Canada (actually on a physical computer in Canada) on google.ca. I'm hoping I can fix this both to improve Canadian search results, and I'm assuming that whatever is making .com appear so well in Canada is hurting it on the US side. Any ideas?
International SEO | | absoauto0 -
Duplicate content on .co.uk and .com TLDs with different domain authority
What's the best approach to take for a site that has identical content on the .co.uk and .com versions of the root domain? The .co.uk version has a significantly higher domain authority (54 vs 32 according to Open Site Explorer - see attached screenshot). But it's an international company with its largest customer base in North America and customers in over 60 countries. The company does not intend to localize content. My initial thought before seeing the domain authority was to 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com domain to consolidate all the link equity under one international TLD. However, I wondered if the higher domain authority for .co.uk would be passed on if we did this. I figured that a non-UK audience would be more likely to trust a .com site. I still think 301 redirecting .co.uk to .com might be the best strategy in the long term. But is there likely to be a dip in rankings and organic search volume in the short term until .co.uk is replaced in the index by .com? I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. CbVnfSO.png
International SEO | | Torchbox0 -
Geographic Target set up in Google webmaster tool
Hi, When i launched my web site 3 months ago ( I'm am very new to SEO) I have set up the geographical target section in Google webmaster tool for US. Now, I'm thinking to change it to some other geo target to see if i can get more traffic. However, recently few of my prompted keywords got really well in Google US ranking. Here are my Questions: if i will change the geo settings in webmaster tool will effect the ranking i already managed to achieve in US? In the list of all the countries in Google webmaster tools what does is mean "unlisted"? Can i select more than one country to target and if I can how? Thanks!! Raviv
International SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
Geo Targeting SEO Techniques for Google UK
I'm starting a new SEO project whereby I'll be targeting UK search engines only such as Google.co.uk, (I'm from the states) and I'm gathering all the information I can get on this topic Obviously, I got a CO.UK TLD, and hosting/IP is UK based, but can anyone shed light on other techniques that has worked for you, Besides of the above here is some advice I picked up so far; Regional directory listings,
International SEO | | Plorex
Inbound and outbound inks from/to UK based websites,
Geographic targeting in Google webmaster tools,
British slang... What else is there?
Much appreciated0 -
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 -
Would other TLDs (Top Level Domains) be helpful?
Hi, I have a website geared towards an international crowd. It is written in English on the .com TLD. We are currently having it translated to Japanese on the .jp TLD and to French on the .fr TLD. Is getting a TLD for each country/translation a good way to go? Not only in terms of SEO, but is this the best way to get found in these other countries? Second questions: Would getting TLDs in other English speaking countries do any good? Like .com.au or .com.nz or .ca? Again, both in terms of SEO and reach for users in those countries. Last question, since I'm not going to change the content much (or any...) for the other English TLDs, how should I go about them? 301 redirect to the .com website? Show same content without a redirect? Other idea? Thank you in advance! -Elad
International SEO | | Eladla0