If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
-
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
-
It is actually a good idea to split the two language versions into two different sites as it will help each of the sites rank in their own countries. It's an even better idea to use country-specific domains for that.
To make things clear, translated content is not duplicate content. The search engines have no incentive to penalize sites for translating their content, so you would be safe from any filter that search engines might use.
However, you are advised to use hreflang when linking to the different language versions of the site to let the search engines know that both sites are linked together, as it would help search engines provide the correct language version of the site to targeted users.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com -
In most cases, no. I would still add language tags to your site, but Google tends to view different language sites as localized to that language.
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
-
New websites issues- Duplicate urls and many title tags. Is it fine for SEO?
Hey everyone, I have found few code issues with our new website and wanted to see how bad those problems are and if I have missed anything. If someone can take a look at this and help me it would mean the world. Thank you. all! We hired an agency to design a new site for us and it's almost ready, but the other day I found some problems that made me wonder if this new site might not be as good as I thought and I wanted to ask you to take a look at the code and possibly help me understand if from SEO prospective it is sound. But I really want someone who understands SEO and web design to look at our code and point out what might be wrong there. Here is a link to the actual site which is on a new server: http://209.50.54.42/ What I found few days ago that made me wonder something might not be right. Problem 1. Each page has 3 title tags, I guess whatever template they are using it automatically creates 3 title tags. When you do " View Page Source" For example on this url: http://209.50.54.42/washington-dc-transportation when you view the code, the lines Lines 16,19 and 20 have the title tag which in my opinion is wrong and there should only be one. Could this hurt our SEO? Problem 2. Infinite duplicate urls found All following pages have INFINITE NUMBER OF DUPLICATE URLS. EXAMPLE: http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/8, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/1048, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/7, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/1, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy you can add any type of number to this url and it will show the same page. I really think this 2nd problem is huge as it will create duplicate content. There should be only 1 url per page, and if I add any number to the end should give a 404 error. I have managed to find these 2 issues but I am not sure what else could be wrong with the code. Would you be able to look into this? And possible tell us what else is incorrect? I really like the design and we worked really hard on this for almost 5 moths but I want to make sure that when we launch the new site it does not tank our rankings and only helps us in a positive way. Thanks in advance, Davit
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Same product in different categories and duplicate content issues
Hi,I have some questions related to duplicate content on e-commerce websites. 1)If a single product goes to multiple categories (eg. A black elegant dress could be listed in two categories like "black dresses" and "elegant dresses") is it considered duplicate content even if the product url is unique? e.g www.website.com/black-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/elegant-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/black-elegant-dress unique url > this is the way my products urls look like Does google perceive this as duplicated content? The path to the content is only one, so it shouldn't be seen as duplicated content, though the product is repeated in different categories.This is the most important concern I actually have. It is a small thing but if I set this wrong all website would be affected and thus penalised, so I need to know how I can handle it. 2- I am using wordpress + woocommerce. The website is built with categories and subcategories. When I create a product in the product page backend is it advisable to select just the lowest subcategory or is it better to select both main category and subcategory in which the product belongs? I usually select the subcategory alone. Looking forward to your reply and suggestions. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cinzia091 -
Is there a difference between .us and .org for a website targetting the US market?
Hello, We were searching for some evidence regarding this and couldn't find much so the question. We have a service that is related only to the USA market. If we buy a .us domain name with the service we provide in the domain name will google treat it the same with a .org? We did searches regarding this but didn't see too many .us domains popping up. Unfortunately the .com is not available. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anitawapa0 -
Duplicate Content For Product Alternative listing
Hi I have a tricky one here. cloudswave is a directory of products and we are launching new pages called Alternatives to Product X This page displays 10 products that are an alternative to product X (Page A) Lets say now you want to have the alternatives to a similar product within the same industry, product Y (Page B), you will have 10 product alternatives, but this page will be almost identical to Page A as the products are in similar and in the same industry. Maybe one to two products will differ in the 2 listings. Now even SEO tags are different, aren't those two pages considered duplicate content? What are your suggestions to avoid this problem? thank you guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RSedrati0 -
4 questions about a paragraph of SEO friendly text in my e-com websites header.
Hi guys, I'm trying to understand the SEO behind our websites header. www.mountainjade.co.nz As you can see we have a paragraph of relevant introductory text that is also SEO friendly in our header. What I would like some help with is understanding how google views and assigns 'juice' to information like this in the header or footer of a website. Usually certain pages have content specific to a given topic, and google ranks these pages accordingly. But with a websites header / footer its content appears on every page as the header is always at the top and footer at the bottom. 1. In what way does my website benefit from the paragraph of text in the header? e.g at the domain level? Just the home page? etc etc 2. How does google assign 'juice' to the paragraph of text? (similiar to Q1). 3. How would my website be effected if I moved the text to the footer? (Aesthetic change) 4. When I 'inspect element' on the paragraph, it is labelled 'div id=site description.' Can someone please explain the relevance of a sites description to SEO for me. This paragraph of text was in the websites header before I came onboard, and I've been too concerned to change / move it as I don't know enough about it. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks team, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Negative SEO + Disavow
My site is very new (~1 years old), but due to good PR we have gotten some decent links and are already ranking for a key term. This may be why someone decided to start a negative SEO attack on us. We've had less than 200 linking domains up until 2 weeks ago, but since then we have been getting 100+ new domains /day with anchor texts that are either targeted to that key term or are from porn websites. I've gone through the links to get ready and submit a disavow... but should I do it? My rankings/site traffic has not been affected yet. Reasons for my hesitations: 1. Google always warns against using the disavow, and says "you shouldn't have to use it if you are a normal website." (sensing 'guilty-until-proven') 2. Some say Google is only trying to get the data to see if there are any patterns within the linking sites. I don't want the site owners to get hurt, since the villain is someone else using xrumer to put spammy comments on their site. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ALLee0 -
All Thin Content removed and duplicate content replaced. But still no success?
Good morning, Over the last three months i have gone about replacing and removing all the duplicate content (1000+ page) from our site top4office.co.uk. Now it been just under 2 months since we made all the changes and we still are not showing any improvements in the SERPS. Can anyone tell me why we aren't making any progress or spot something we are not doing correctly? Another problem is that although we have removed 3000+ pages using the removal tool searching site:top4office.co.uk still shows 2800 pages indexed (before there was 3500). Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
How does Google see an article in two languages?
Hi, We are translating our articles into French (they are already in English) and are considering Cantonese & Mandarin. How does Google see this? Say I post an article on Diabetes Symptoms in English, Cantonese and French. Same article, different languages. Does Google look at this as three separate articles, ranking you uniquely, or does it count as one article? Thanks, Erin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | erinhealthchoices0