International SEO & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags

[ccox1]

Hi Everyone,

I have a client that has two sites (example.com & example.co.uk) each have the same English content, but no hreflang or rel="canonical" tags in place. Would this be interpreted as duplicate content? They haven't changed the copy to speak to specific regions, but have tried targeting the UK with a ccTLD.

I've taken a look at some other comparable question on MOZ like this post - > https://moz.com/community/q/international-hreflang-will-this-handle-duplicate-content where one of the answers says  **"If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary." **If hreflang tags are not necessary, then would I need rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content?

Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow SEO out.

[NickJasuja]

The correct way to get .co.uk to rank the in UK and .com to rank elsewhere is to use Hreflang tags, but only if content on the two sites is different. If it's the same content i.e., it has not been localized to UK, then you are better off using only 1 website. Google often ignores Hreflang markup when it encounters duplicate content.

So you have 2 options:

1. Retire 1 of the websites because it's useless to have duplicate content.
2. Use Hreflang and make sure that content is NOT duplicate but localized for at least 1 of the sites.

[robmarsden]

Hi Charles

Yes you'll need hreflang tags on those two sites wherever you have duplicated content. I'm not sure about that sentence in bold that you found in another Moz post however referencing the Google guidelines on hreflang, they have the following:

• You keep the main content in a single language and translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content, like forums, typically do this.
• Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

The second point is most relevant to you in this situation I believe. Duplicate English content targeting different regions.

I would NOT recommend using the canonical tag because that will seriously limit the visibility of the piece of content that is your non-canonical version. If you want exposure in Google UK for your .co.uk site and other versions of Google for your .com then use hreflang and Google will be able to understand how your content should be targeted.

Furthermore, if you want to target one specific country with your .com (e.g. USA) then you can use the country geotargeting report in Google Search Console.

All the best