Same language, Different countries. What would be the best way to introduce it?

[Meditinc.com]

Hello,

We have a .com magento store with the US geo targeting

We're going to launch a different versions soon, one for the US, and another one for Canada (we're going to add a Spanish and French versions later as well)

The stores content will be same, except currency and contact us page.

What would be a better strategy to introduce it to Google?

1. What is better URL structure? example.com/ca/ , example.com/en-ca/ , or ca.example.com/ ?

2. Should we stay with the original www.example.com/ (example.com) and just close an access to /ca/ and /us/ / or use rel=canonical / or use "alternate" hreflang to avoid duplicate content issues?

Thanks in advance

[Meditinc.com]

Thanks for your input Gianluca,

The ecommerce ( http://www.fiberscope.net/ ) doesn't seem big compare to bigger fishes. What do you think, are we on the right path with the current structure?

[gfiorelli1]

Regarding this:

Here is thing - we are going to add /ca/ and /us/ versions for clients' convenience only. Native currency, shipping options, and direct contact of our US office. We don't want them ranked separately.

What do you really mean with "we don't want them ranked separately"?

Maybe I'm lost in translation, but I don't understand if you that means that you don't want to have the Canadian version ranking for some sort of fear it may cause issue with the organic visibility of the US version.

However, if you simply mean that you want to use the same domain name for both the US and CA versions, while for the Spanish one you will build the site under a different domain name... then, that's totally fine and I don't see many problems with this mixed subfolders/different domain names strategy.

Using the hreflang annotation will be enough in order to avoid "duplicated content issues" between the CA and US versions.

Regarding if using subfolders or subdomains, I would look at how complex is your ecommerce. If it is based on a very big products' database, hence with added complexity... I would probably choose the subdomain option. Remember also that if you client's side did not have a canadian version, multiplying per 2 the quantity of URLs of the site will also mean an extreme dilution of the domain's pagerank, and a bigger dilution as bigger is the number of the URLs you will add.

Instead, if the ecommerce is a small one (and will stay a small one), using subfolders can be a good option.

Regarding the blog, if you will publish the same posts both for the canadian and usa markets, then my suggestion is to have only one blog for both markets (domain.com/blog/)

[DmitriiK]

I say keep the blog under the same directory, unless you produce it in different languages.

[Meditinc.com]

Thanks guys,

Here is thing - we are going to add /ca/ and /us/ versions for clients' convenience only. Native currency, shipping options, and direct contact of our US office. We don't want them ranked separately. Client is coming to our general website and base on his IP we ask if he want to shop at the specific country store.  He has an option to choose, or not to choose the country site.

From other side, when other version will be added later (Spanish one, for Central and South America customers), we would like to see it ranked independently from our main website.

So, it looks like the hreflang should work for /ca/ and /us/ without closing them from indexation.

BTW, if we have a blog at example.com/blog should we have it available at e.g. example.com/us/blog as well (with added tags), or just keep it as is?

[TakeshiYoung]

1. I would go with example.com/ca/. example.com/en-ca/ is longer and more difficult to type. A subdomain ca.example.com would not inherit the domain authority of your current site.

2. I would keep the original example.com. Moving urls results in a small loss of link equity, even with a 301 redirect, so I would avoid moving urls if at all possible.

[DmitriiK]

Hi there.

Hreflang is the way to go. No matter how you decide to organize domain - subfolder or subdomain, if actual content is the same, you'll have duplicate issues. Also canonical link is probably not the way to go, unless you want one of your contents (let's say canadian) not rank.

Hope this helps.