Cross Domain Canonicalization for Site Folder
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Hello colleagues!
I have a client who decided to launch a separate domain so they could offer their content translated for other countries. Each country (except the US/English) content lives in its own country folder as follows:
client.com/01/02/zh
client.com/01/02/twetc.
The problem is that they post the content in US/English on this domain too. It does NOT have its own folder, but exists righth after the date (as in the above example) Oh, and the content is the same as on their "main" domain so google likes to index that sometimes vs. the original client on the domain where we want the traffic to go.
SO, is there a way to say "hey google, please index the US content only on the main domain, but continue to index the translated content in these folders on this totally separate domain?"
Thank you so much in advance.
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Thank you SO very much! This is exactly what I will do.
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So, if both versions of each English pages are identical, and both for the US market, then I think you may need to utilize two different approaches together. First, you can use cross-domain canonicalization on the English pages on the secondary domain to point them to the primary domain (along with a self-referencing canonical on the primary domain). And second, you can use hreflang tags on the English pages on the primary domain and the other languages on the secondary domain, to specify which versions of each page are for which locales (along with x-default and self-referencing hreflang tags).
On the other hand, if the English pages on the secondary domain are for another English language market (non-US), then you could use just a full-blown hreflang solution.
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