International SEO Query

[SO_UK]

Hi All,

I have an international SEO question and was wondering if you could help.

My client runs a website in the UK (www.example.co.uk). The site is ranked well for it's collection of keywords, my client now wishes to target the US market.

He wishes to use the same web structure and design in new site www.example.com as we know this converts well.

My questions are:

What would be the best practice for setting this up? I know there will be duplicate content issues if a website is duplicated.

If we use the same design and website structure but re-word content, would this be acceptable?

Thank you for all your help in advance.

[gfiorelli1]

As Maurice wrote,

I urge to remember that American English is different from British English, therefore it would be useful to revisit the content in order to make it fit to how English is spoken/written in the USA. That would have an impact in how Americans perceive the site, for localization and, obviously, for SEO geo-targeting.

Then, yes, use the hreflang annotations in order to clearly suggest to Google what version must be shown to whom, geo-target the USA site on Google Search Console (and do not forget to do the same in Bing).

Regarding what to choose between a new domain name, subfolder or subdomain for the USA website, that choice must be taken considering not only SEO factors.

1. For instance, if your UK website is already receiving interesting volume of traffic, when you can reasonably think to go for an independent domain name (it should be a generic, because in the USA the ccTld .us is not even considered "american"), so that you could create also a very geo-targeted experience for the USA audience.
2. If you have traffic, but not in great proportions, and if your website is not an ecommerce or one with a very complex and big URL structure and database, then you can think opting for the subfolder option.
3. On the contrary, if your traffic from the USA is not big already and the site architecture is complex and the database very big, then it would be better going for the subdomain option.

In the last 2 cases, though, the ideal would be to finally migrate the USA site to an independent domain name once the visibility in the USA, both in terms of Search and Brand recognition, has reached sustainable levels.

Finally, remember that the .com is much harder than the .co.uk, so be prepared to struggle more than you have done until now for earning in the USA the same results you earned in UK.