Optimizing for 3 international sites, how to avoid getting into trouble

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

As a newbie, I want to avoid any penalties or mistakes as possible that will be due to unknown and have taken some steps to educate myself around international sites and multiple domains.

our aim was to target new zealand first and then branch out.  Whilst we are pondering the NZ site and writing fresh unique articles for the site and the blog.  And besides making the currency, language more relevant to these domains, is there anything else I could work on? I thought about making the meta tags different for the home page and adding Australia etc If we are going to spend time growing the site organically I thought I would make the most of spending the time growing all three together....

Any recommendations on how to get started and optimize the 3 alot better?

Thanks

[edward-may]

thanks Ray, the site is lifereader. co.nz and the another good one would be california psychics.  the industry is quiet competitive so not sure they would join the discussion to tell us there tricks, although that would be great lol

[Ray-pp]

I don't see why not - I haven't seen any rules against it and I don't think it would be 'frowned upon.' We're all about analyzing strategies, techniques, and technical issues so if providing a website helps the community do that then I would post it.

If anything, your competitor should be on top of their brand mentions and see that their domain was mentioned, which may invite them into the conversation.

If I'm wrong about that, the Moz staff will set me straight.

[edward-may]

Can I share a competitors website on here?

[Ray-pp]

You can PM me directly if something is sensitive. However, if the community can also respond I prefer to have all questions available to the public.

[edward-may]

Thanks Ray is concerning that you bring this up, as I said we don't want to be penalised.  Can I share more information with you on here somehow?

With regard to the comment made by the seo company, that was initially why we never took action upon this alot earlier, and having seen our competitors do it, we never really paid to much attention to it, but I'm being very mindful of the situation...

It would be good to get more feedback yes.  Thanks alot for your responses.

[Ray-pp]

Well, that' an understandable position to be in. Unfortunately, I cannot speak directly to the following:

"I was also told by our current SEO company that google only penalises sites that have duplicate content in the same localised areas...."

I'm guessing your developer means country specific areas and not necessary city/region, which would be susceptible to penalties in this situation.

I would really like to hear from someone else in the Moz community with more direct experience on this international issue - hopefully someone speaks up soon

[edward-may]

Hi Ray-pp

Thank you very much for your response.  We had alot of trouble getting merchant facilities for the .com being based in NZ for this type of acitivity with high charge backs we needed the co.nz domain, also we noticed our competitors were doing the same, on top of com, com.au and co.nz they also have co.uk and so when we first initiated the domain we decided to go for It and on top of that it could also be an issue trying to get this appointed to our team, as it is quiet the task atm!

So we are trying to get around this situation.  I could name my competitors but It may not look so good to point it out on here, and I don't really know how they are able to get around it as they have not changed any content, they have only changed the content around in the meta tag home page.

I was also told by our current SEO company that google only penalises sites that have duplicate content in the same localised areas.... ? Can you clarify this?

[Ray-pp]

As your sites are currently configured, you do run the risk of a duplicate content penalty. Your site's appear to be the same, except for the URLs (same content across each domain name).

I'd start by asking why you need to have country specific domains. A .com ranks very well internationally. I understand the importance of having the unique domain names from a trademark perspective, but if the content will not be unique I suggest having them all 301 redirect to the .com domain. If possible, have the site translate to the country language when choosing from the international drop down, rather than visiting the country specific domain.

This cuts down on a lot of the maintenance needed for multiple domains and prevent duplicate content penalties.

If you want to keep the domains separate and have the content be mostly duplicate, you would need to look into cross-domain canonicalization. From what I saw, you do not have any canonical tags on the site at this point. Plus, we need to remember that canonical tags are only a suggestion for the search engines to follow and they may choose not to adhere to the tags you put in place.