International SEO & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags
-
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.
-
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:
- Retire 1 of the websites because it's useless to have duplicate content.
- Use Hreflang and make sure that content is NOT duplicate but localized for at least 1 of the sites.
-
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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is this approach of returning different content depending on IP beneficial for international SEO?
I've decided to use sub folders for my site, and from everything I've read online it seems I shouldn't change the page content depending on IP, yet I know of a successful well funded site that hires full time SEO staff that does just that, and I'm wondering whether they know something I don’t which is helping their SEO. From everything I've read online this is the format I think I should use: mysite.com/us/red-wigs mysite.com/gb/red-wigs mysite.com/red-wigs does not exist This is the format the other site is using: othersite.com/red-wigs (from US IP address) othersite.com/red-wigs (from UK IP address) othersite.com/gb/red-wigs The content on othersite.com/red-wigs is identical to othersite.com/gb/red-wigs when loading from a UK IP address, and a lot of URLs without /gb/ are being returned when searching google. The benefit I can think of that they are gaining is US pages which are being returned for UK based searches will return the correct content. Are their any other gains to this approach? I'm concerned that if I use this approach for different languages then the radically differing content of othersite.com/red-wigs depending on the location of the crawler might confuse google - also generally changing content depending on IP seems to be recommended against. Thanks
International SEO | | Mickooo0 -
Hreflang implementation via sitemap - don’t need canonical tags?
Hi, Quick easy question here I hope! An international site has hreflang and canonical tags in page head sections and also hreflang in the sitemap so I can see one version needs removing. The head section versions are relative URLs and need updating so think we will keep the sitemap hreflangs instead. If the sitemap implementation is going to be used (sitemap auto-updates when changes are made to pages so seems easier to do this way) am I right in thinking No canonical tags are needed at all (and can safely be removed from head section too?). Pretty sure links included in sitemap are assumed to be canonicals, or any issues with this approach? Will be using x-default for the default language version of homepage too.
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Splitting a site into 2 international sites
Hi all, I have a client that currently has a .com domain that ranks in both the US and the UK for various search terms. They have identified a need to provide different information for UK and US visitors which will require 2 versions of all pages. If we set up a .co.uk domain and keep the .com obviously that will be a brand new UK site which will have zero rankings. Any suggestions as to the best way to introduce this second version of the content without losing UK rankings? Thanks
International SEO | | danfrost0 -
Shabaka domain - Impact on SEO
Hi All, I heard about shabaka domain names recently and am not sure if getting a shabaka top-level domain with arabic content help from a SEO stand-point? Currently my Arabic website is on this domain: http://www.tcf-me.ae/ Do you think it is a good idea to get a shabaka domain to target the GCC countries on our Arabic website? Or does it not matter? Thoughts? Thanks in advance for your help.
International SEO | | LaythDajani1 -
Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz. Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it. Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great! Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
E-Commerce site in 2 languages - Duplicate content or not?
How does Google view this? Our current site works like:
International SEO | | bjs2010
www.domain.com/EN - English
www.domain.com/ES - Spanish All products are the same, just different language and different URL for them - is this good or bad? I thought of either Going with .co.uk or .com for "English" and a .es for "Spanish"
OR Subdomaining it. www.es.domain.com and www.en.domain.com Any advice appreciated!0 -
Geotarget subfolders with the same language or get rid of duplicates but lose option to geotarget?
Hi, we have a domain that is aimed to cover LatAm region. Currently, the homepage contains country selector for ~20 countries. 95% of them hold content in Spanish. We have only homepages for each regions as separate subfolders, i.e.
International SEO | | eset
www.maindomain.com/co
www.maindomain.com/cl
www.maindomain.com/br
etc. but once the user clicks on menu item he is taken back to main domain subpages, i.e. www.maindomain.com/comprar My struggle is to decide whether it is better to: A) copy all content for each subfolder, which will create huge amount of duplicates (there are no resources to create unique content and it is even impossible taking into account nature of the product - mostly tech.specs, etc.) and implement hreflang sitemaps and configure GWT to target each country with its own Spanish content (the same for each country) OR B) remove all local subfolders and keep only main domain in Spanish that will serve all countries within the region. With this option, we will get rid of duplicates but also lose option to geotarget. So, my questions is which option will do less harm, or if there is any other approach that comes to your minds. I consulted with two agencies but still haven't got clear answer. Thanks a lot for your help!0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0