Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. Country specific domains pointing to a .com site

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Country specific domains pointing to a .com site

    International SEO
    3
    7
    1976
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jimmer
      jimmer last edited by

      Hello,

      I am new to seo so please be easy if this happens to be a "silly" question. My company has a .com site. We are expanding into global markets, focusing on specific countries right now.

      General question: Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site?

      Thanks,

      Jim

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • sethmissile
        sethmissile last edited by

        I work with a few multi-national enterprise level sites. For a site to gain good visibility in non-US countries, it is critical that the content on those sites be in the target language.

        You don't need to necessarily own a country-coded Top Level Domain like a website.fr, either. Plenty of companies do great using .com/fr.  If that is the route you take, make sure you translate as much content as possible into the languages that represent the countries you are targeting.

        If you create country specific sub-directories and just use your English content you will lose some control over what Google will display in search results. The canonical tag can help, but it's best to create in-language content.

        Feel free to reach out to me if you need help!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • jimmer
          jimmer @jimmer last edited by

          Thanks again!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RyanKent
            RyanKent @jimmer last edited by

            The idea is search engines need to clearly understand which country your content is targeting. Using a ccTLD such as .fr is a very strong indicator of your target country. Some other indicators:

            • use the meta language tag in the header of your pages

            • ensure your monetary units and measurement units are consistent with the target country

            • ensure the language dialect is consistent with your target country. For example, US English is not the same as UK English.

            • Other references to culture and businesses can be considered.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • jimmer
              jimmer @RyanKent last edited by

              Ryan,

              One quick question. You mentioned, "assuming it was properly set up". Can you point me down a road where I can glean some info re: proper setup?

              Thanks,
              Jim

              RyanKent jimmer 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • jimmer
                jimmer @RyanKent last edited by

                Thanks Ryan!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • RyanKent
                  RyanKent last edited by

                  Hi Jim.

                  Duplicate content refers to the content itself being made available on multiple URLs. You can duplicate content internally or externally.

                  Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site?

                  No. Let's assume you own www.mysite.com and also own www.mysite.fr. If you use a 301 redirect to point the french URL to your main site, there would be no penalty as all the content is still only on one site.

                  Another note is translated content is not considered as duplicate content.

                  A final note is country-specific sites can duplicate your .com site without it being considered duplicate content. If you have a .fr site it could be an exact duplicate of your .com site but the .fr site, assuming it was properly set up, would rank well in Google.fr whereas the .com site would rank well in Google.com or whichever country was the focus of the .com site.

                  jimmer 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • Arropa

                    Spanish word as English domain name

                    hi anyine  any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name. other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names. thanks

                    International SEO | | Arropa
                    0
                  • Humix

                    Problems with the google cache version of different domains.

                    We have problems with the google cache version of different domains.
                    For the “.nl” domain we have an “.be” cache..
                    Enter “cache:www.dmlights.nl” in your browser to see this result. Following points are already adapted: Sitemap contains hreflang tag Sitemap is moved to the location www.dmlights.nl/sitemap.xml We checked the DNS configuration Changed the Content language in de response header to : Content-Language: nl-NL Removed the cache with webmastertools Resolved serverrequest errors. Can anyone provide a solution to fix this problem? Thanks, Pieter

                    International SEO | | Humix
                    0
                  • lcourse

                    How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?

                    I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
                    Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking? I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain). Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned? What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?

                    International SEO | | lcourse
                    0
                  • david.smith.segarra

                    Does Google's algorithm work the same in every country?

                    I can't help but feel this is a silly question! but does Google algorithm work exactly the same throughout all countries? I run a few sites in the UK and a couple in Spain but can't help but feel that my Spanish sites are harder to rank for. The sites that rank the best are business directories in Spain... whereas here in the UK you'd be lucky to find one on page one..

                    International SEO | | david.smith.segarra
                    0
                  • SOS_Children

                    Subdomains or subfolders for language specific sites?

                    We're launching an .org.hk site with English and Traditional Chinese variants. As the local population speaks both languages we would prefer not to have separate domains and are deciding between subdomains and subfolders. We're aware of the reasons behind generally preferring folders, but many people, including moz.com, suggest preferring subfolders to subdomains with the notable exception of language-specific sites. Does this mean subdomains should be preferred for language specific sites, or just that they are okay? I can't find any rationale to this other than administrative simplification (e.g. easier to set up different analytics / hosting), which in our case is not an issue. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

                    International SEO | | SOS_Children
                    0
                  • Corel

                    Non US site pages indexed in US Google search

                    Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results.  Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page.  At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region.  Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie

                    International SEO | | Corel
                    0
                  • izaiasalmeida

                    How to rank in Google for a specific country?

                    Hi, I've a relative good ranking for a specific keyword in google.com (english queries (hl=en)), but searching for the same keyword in google.com.br (Brazilian Portuguese (hl=pt-BR)), my rank for that keyword is far worst. The question is: I need to do something specific to rank in google.com.br (hl=pt-BR)? I'm doing the regular link building. Creating some blogs, blogging for 10 days before droping my links, and creating link wheels the same way. The blogs I create to make links are written in Brazilian Portuguese, also, the blog that I'm trying to rank higher, is also written in Brazilian Portuguese. Sorry for the english, it's not my native language. Thanks

                    International SEO | | izaiasalmeida
                    0
                  • BlinkWeb

                    Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?

                    I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?

                    International SEO | | BlinkWeb
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.