2 eCommerce stores that are identical 1 for US 1 for CA, what's the best way to SEO?

[Snaptech_Marketing]

Hello everyone! I have an SEO question that I cannot solve given the parameters of the project, and I was wondering if someone could provide me with the next best alternative to my situation. Thank you in advance.

The problem:

Two eCommerce stores are completely identical (structure, products, descriptions, content) but they are on separate domains for currency and targeting purposes. www.website-can.com is for Canada and www.website-usa.com is for US. Due to exchange rate issues, we are unable to combine the 2 domains into 1 store and optimize.

What's been done?

I have optimized the Canadian store with unique meta titles and descriptions for every page and every product. However I have left the US store untouched. I would like to gain more visibility for the US Store but it is very difficult to create unique content considering the products are identical.

I have evaluated using canonicals but that would ask Google to only look at either the Canadian or US store, , correct me if i'm wrong.

I am looking for the next best solution given the challenges and I was wondering if someone could provide me with some ideas.

[Snaptech_Marketing]

Thank you Gianluca! This was very helpful.

[gfiorelli1]

I disagree with cross domain canonical (see Moosa answer below).

Moreover, never canonicalize a URL if it has an hreflang implemented, because you will just cause big confusion for Google (what I must obey to?).

The hreflang solves the nearly duplicated content issues in International SEO, because currencies, measuring metrics, phone numbers, contact email are tiny but huge small things that make two URLs very different, as Google itself says in its hreflang help page https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

[gfiorelli1]

See my answer above and the one by Moosa below.

Cross canonical in International SEO is a no no in the 99% of the cases.

[Snaptech_Marketing]

Hi Moosa,

Thank you for your input! Thank you for clarifying the repercussions of using canonicals in this situation.

[MoosaHemani]

If you have two different domain contact exact same things (products, descriptions, contact and more), there is no other way other than the possibilities mentioned by Dmitrii.

Even the canonical version will only allow Google to index one domain and remove other one from the index so from the SERP point of view you will only have one domain instead of two.

Hope this helps!

[Snaptech_Marketing]

Hi Dmitri,

Thank you for your suggestions. With regards to the exchange rates, we have looked extensively into all the possible options and the conclusion is that we cannot combine the two stores under one domain. There are more details to this problem such as matching prices with local vendors etc. But thanks for your suggestion.

I will consider using canonical links as I do agree that is the next best alternative.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Due to exchange rate issues, we are unable to combine the 2 domains into 1 store and optimize.

I think that this is not good enough reason. There are somewhat easy ways to adjust price depending on where the product is being shipped to. So, I'd recommend to look into combining those two domains into one a little bit more.

Now, as for your situation. Since the websites are in the same language, and you pretty much is saying that you have to have exact content, then no, there is no any other way of handling this situation, rather than using canonical links.

So, to sum up:

• Combine those domains OR;
• Have completely different content OR;
• Use canonical links.

P.S. You might look into hreflang, but I don't think it'd help, since it's all in one language.

Cheers.