Does having 2 separate domains with similar content always = duplicate content?
-
I work for a global company which is in the process of launching their US & European websites, (just re-launched Australian site, migrated from an old domain) all with separate domains with the purpose of localising. However, the US website content will essentially be the same as the Australian one with minor changes (z instead of s, slightly different service offerings etc) but the core information will be the same as the AU site. Will this be seen as duplicate content and Is there a way we can structure this so that the content won’t be seen as duplicate but is still a separate localised website? Thank you.
-
Great, thank you!
-
Hello,
If the duplicate content is just on about and similar pages, I don't think you will have a problem since as you noted they are different ccTLD and google says they are able to differentiate in those cases.
For your other concern, .eu is a ccTLD, so I don't think you will have an issue since you have multiple ccTLDs and one generic domain.
-
Thank you for your responses.
We will be rewriting some of the content however things like about us will only have the s/z spelling changes as we want to maintain consistent branding.
On a separate note, I've read that having the same content on different ccTLD's isn't considered duplicate content, however only .com.au is a ccTLD. .eu and .com are considered generic TLDs...does the same apply for generic?
Thanks
-
To be safe and ensure you don't incur a duplicate content penalty, I would re-write the content if possible. Maybe it can be written to be geared more towards a US audience and the AU content more towards an Australian audience as to differentiate them even more.
-
It depends on your understanding of "similar". Sometimes similar content can look different, sometimes it won't. If you change few words on few thousand word article, it will definitely be duplicate content. Hope that helps.
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
-
I have a USA Shopify store and want to create a UK store. Should I use a domain or a sub-domain for the new store?
I'm currently running 2x Shopify Stores (names changed from actual): "coolpants.com" is our UK store "us.coolpants.com" is our USA store However, Google Analytics has shown that most of the traffic to "coolpants.com" comes from the USA, and this market has our biggest growth potential. So we want to switch our domain setup to the below: Make "coolpants.com" our USA store Stop using "us.coolpants.com" and redirect it to "coolpants.com" Set up our UK store as a new domain ("coolpants.co.uk) or subdomain ("uk.coolpants.com") My question is – should I set up the UK store as a domain or a sub-domain? What are the pros and cons of each? Thank you in advance for any help!
Local Website Optimization | | benkapow0 -
Breaking through strong competition domains
We are trying to rank this domain: https://citychurchbloomington.org/ for this phrase churches in bloomington in. We recently had updated our domain name from citychurchfamily.org to citychurchbloomington.org because 1) it made sense for the organization, the end-user searching, and to help our rankings. Currently we are at position #4 on page 1 but have three sites ahead of us: churchfinder - in the last year this site came out of nowhere and slowly made its way up to the top spot high rock - this church had held spot #1 for many years and we've struggled to challenge it's place on the search results and are somewhat unclear why sherwood oaks - this site had been in spot #2 for many years and at times we've been able to challenge it's position but its held fairly tightly at spot #2 in the past, #3 since churchfinder rose up in the last year We've done competitive research and made some changes to our meta title, description, and h1 tag on our site but we're looking to make our next move to try and break into this top tier of results. I'm asking the community here for any insight/suggestions into what kind of move we should be exploring or making at this stage to move up. Sincerely, Andrew
Local Website Optimization | | a_toohill0 -
Maintaining Rank During a Domain Change
Looking to the community for any insights on our situation. We moved a decently ranked domain name that was ranking between 3rd-6th in organic search results to a new domain that we thought would serve us higher position in the long term. We went through Google's change of address tool and over a period of 2 to 3 weeks we went from being off the map with our new domain to showing up again around page 2 - 14-18th position. It seemed that our climb back corresponded to Google indexing our new urls. Each time a large batch was indexed we seemed to jump back up. But, in our last report we noticed that we didn't budge any higher and some of our non-branded keywords actually dropped a little. The old domain was "citychurchfamily.org" and the new domain is "citychurchbloomington.org". We were thinking that the latter would be a stronger domain in the long term. Any insights on why we haven't fully retained our former ranking value at this point or anything I should be focusing on? We are trying to rank for this phrase "churches in bloomington, in". Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | a_toohill1 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
Content writing for single entity business (The use of I)
Most of my clients consist of single entity law firms in which my clients repeatedly use the pronoun "I" to describe every service they provide. I have always preferred using the business name The Law Office of..." put lawyer name here". Is it ok to repetitively use the pronoun "I" in the content. To me it feels lack luster and childish not very professional, however I have a hard time convincing the lawyers of this. What are your thoughts? Can good content be written with the repetitive use of "I"? If not is the business name sufficient or maybe another pronoun? I will be showing responses to my clients if that is ok.
Local Website Optimization | | donsilvernail0 -
Should I open a new domain and website for a new location under one company?
Hi my name is Gina and I wanted to ask for some advice. I'm thinking opening a diff location and was thinking if its a good idea to open up a new domain and new website? And why that may be a good idea and why or a bad idea and why?
Local Website Optimization | | LittleDog0 -
Can PPC harm SEO results, even if it's off-domain?
Here's the scenario. We're doing SEO for a national franchise business. We have over 60 location pages on the same domain, that we control. Another agency is doing PPC for the same business, except they're leading people to un-indexable landing pages off domain. Apparently they're also using location extensions for the businesses that have been set up improperly, at least according to the Account Strategists at Google that we work with. We're having a real issue with these businesses ranking in the multi-point markets (where they have multiple locations in a city). See, the client wants all their location landing pages to rank organically for geolocated service queries in those cities (we'll say the query is "fridge repair"). We're trying to tell them that the PPC is having a negative effect on our SEO efforts, even though there shouldn't be any correlation between the two. I still think the PPC should be focused on their on-domain location landing pages (and so does our Google rep), because it shows consistency of brand, etc. I'm getting a lot of pushback from the client and the other agency, of course. They say it shouldn't matter. Has anyone here run into this? Any ammo to offer up to convince the client that having us work at "cross-purposes" is a bad idea? Thanks so much for any advice!
Local Website Optimization | | Treefrog_SEO0 -
How do I fix duplicate content issues if the pages are really just localized versions?
Does this still hurt our SEO? Should we place different countries on their own respective domains (.co.uk, etc)?
Local Website Optimization | | fdmgroup0