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
-
International Targeting: What Does Google Consider an Equivalent Page?
Hi All, We are working with an international brand that owns several domains across the EU and in North America. Our team is in the process of setting up international targeting using sitemaps to indicate alternate language pages. This is being done to prevent North American pages from being served in the UK, Spain pages from being served in Portugal, or any other combination of possibilities... Currently we are mapping duplicate or “equivalent” pages and defining them as rel="alternate" on their respective sitemaps. The problem is, it’s not always explicitly clear what Google considers “equivalent.” 1. In this instance, URL structures vary by domain,
International SEO | | MetaPaul
2. in most cases the content is similar (but unique),
3. the landing page templates vary is design and functionality,
4. and lastly, services often contain nuances that make them slightly different from one another (Professional Liability Insurance vs Professional Indemnity Insurance). All things considered, these pages are offering the same service, but are vastly different (see above). Q: Is it appropriate to use these attributes to serve the correct language / regional URL to searchers? Q: Is there a rule of thumb on what should be considered an "equivalent" page? Thanks All, Paul3 -
Setting up a website targeted for the US
Hi, As an English company we have a co.uk domain with .com domain pointing to this. We are now looking to launch a separate (new) website targeting the American market and I have been asked to do the following: If an American or Canadian IP address visits the .com website it automatically goes to our newly created website i.e. website 2. If a non-American or non-Canadian IP address goes to .com it automatically goes to the original website i.e. website 1. If a user is on website 1 and clicks an American flag it takes the website user to website 2. If a user is on website 2 and clicks on the UK flag it takes the website user to website 1. Can anyone advise the best way to go about doing this as I feel that this could effect our search rankings. I am concerned how the search engines will penalize website 2 (original site) which has good rankings. Thanks in advance.
International SEO | | Cybertill0 -
Any practical examples of ranking 1 domain in multiple countries?
Hi, I've done a fair amount of research on international SEO including here on MOZ but was hoping some fellow Mozzers might have some practical examples of how they have got 1 domain to rank in multiple countries, ideally US & UK. Im possibly looking at getting a high authority domain which ranks great on US into the UK engines. I want to keep to the 1 domain to benefit from the high authority and for logistical reasons. Thanks in advance, Andy
International SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Do we need to update our sitemaps each time our content changes?
Dear SEO experts! We have created sites maps to get our international sub-domains indexed, however we're unsure if we have to update our sitemaps each time our content changes on our many landing pages which are translated to 17 different languages? Obviously the goal is to make it dynamic so it updates itself. I hope you can help us with some advice. Thanks a lot! Allan
International SEO | | Todoist0 -
.cn domain vs. .com/cn/ folder structure
Hey Moz Community, I'd love to hear your response based on some real world data around leveraging a .cn domain vs. porting the site over to a sub-folder structure (ie. com/cn/ structure). Currently, the site lives on a .cn and is fully translated/localized in simplified chinese - which is the ideal state. As part of a website redesign + cost analysis there is a discussion around moving all global content under a sub-folder structure using href lang, GWT combination to define country content. My question is around China specifically - does a .cn have a signficant impact on ranking? I've read conflicing reports. Secondly, how do Chinese users react to a non-.cn domain? I would imaging the click-through rate performance from SERPs is much lower. Thoughts? Comments?
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
Do you recommend for registering international domains (IDN) for ranking on words used in domain name?
Hi everybody, thanks for putting time to reply me 🙂 I am working on SEO of a website that its content is in Farsi. I have chosen a few rather competitive keywords (difficulty between 30-40% :thanks to KDT in seomoz!) to target. Due to the importance of keyword in domain name I was thinking about registering a few international domains that contain exactly the same Farsi words that I target. Do you recommend this as a valid approach? For each of these domains, I am going to setup a very simple 1 page site for each domain, a few lines of content and a big button linked to my primary website. How does it sound? Best regards,
International SEO | | Ashkan10 -
French Canadian Website and French Language URLs
Hello, One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well? So, this questions has two parts... For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors? For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?
International SEO | | Aviatech0 -
Differents TLDs and same contents not a problem Matt Cutts says?
Matt Cutts says on this video that you can have the same content on different TLDs and there is no duplicate content for Google. Have someone try this experience? For example : same content on "mysite.fr" and "mysite.be". And for the visitors from Belgium, will they see into the SERPs "mysite.be" and for the visitors from France "mysite.fr"? Thank you for your answer guys. Jon watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo&feature=player_embedded
International SEO | | JonathanLeplang1