I did some digging around and found some information:

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10153294676310223

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/pHOQxwrYh_s

http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/inaccurate-google-analytics-traffic-sources/

Don't shoot the messenger -- I cannot know whether these reasons are true for you. Just to summarize some possible issues from those links:

Ad clicks is not the same think as website visitors
Old Google Analytics code
People blocking cookies or having other setups that interfere with GA tracking

I hope these resources might help!

Poor grammar can be a spam signal to search engines. A typo here and there will not hurt you -- but major mistakes with spelling and grammar in every word and every sentence will likely hurt you. There's a middle ground somewhere, but only the search engines know what that is.

Of course, I would copyedit and proofread so that all text is perfect. Not for search engines -- but so that users do not see poor spelling and grammar and then judge your website to be less quality and authoritative. In the end, it's all about usability for humans. Search engines generally aim to show what websites users think are the best.

Short answer: Using the same content on different country-targeted TLDs is generally not a problem.

The explanation:

1. Matt Cutts, the head of Google's web-spam team, says in this video that what you describe is generally not a problem (because you're not being a spammer who is trying to game the system). You can have the same content on different international domains under the same company / brand.

2. I'd review the international best SEO practices described here by Google just to make sure you're all in the clear. Google says you shouldn't worry too much about it, either. But I'd be sure to follow all of these guidelines -- geo-targeting settings for each domain in Webmaster Tools, for example -- in general to "tell" Google that you've got different TLDs targeting different countries.

So, having sites with similar content at multiple international domains should be fine.

Good luck! I hope everything's clear.

Diego, thanks for the question. The issue is complicated, so I'll try to summarize point by point.

Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain. This domain wouldn't have the logo of the brand. This community wouldn't promote the brand itself.

First off, I have to question the brand strategy. WHY does your company not want to the community to build the brand directly? A good, positive online community -- when run well -- can do wonders for a brand over the long term. Hey, just look at how much people love Moz just because of the community. I see no benefits to your company's idea -- and I see a lot of negatives.

The reasoning of this approach is to not interfere in the way of the community users and also the fact that the branded traffic acquired doesn't end up buying at the store

I don't buy this premise. There are times when direct sales are not the best Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of a certain marketing tactic. An online community builds a brand for the long term -- the KPIs may be metrics such as reach and more rather than direct sales resulting from community traffic and posts.

I'd read or watch this Whiteboard Friday -- it's on content marketing, but the idea is relevant. Few people see a piece of content and buy. But that's not the point. The more that people see the content time and time and time again, then the more likely it is that they will remember you when they do want to buy. It's the same idea in advertising: no one buys Coke because of an ad that they saw yesterday -- they buy Coke because of the ads they have seen for their entire lives. Likewise, no one is going to buy after reading a single community post. But the more that people engage and engage and engage with the branded community, the more likely it is that they will buy in the future. It's a long-term play.

Ideally, they would want to have the community in a separate domain.

Do you mean an entirely-separate root domain or a subdomain of the main root domain?

Either way, the same argument below applies.

I am concerned because the brand is not that big to have two domains separated and lose all the authority associated with one strong domain. I would definitely have everything under the same domain, store and community, otherwise we would have to acquire traffic for two domains.

You are correct. As much as Google likes to say that subdomains are treated the same as root domains, most of the data we've seen suggests otherwise. It's best to keep everything under the same root domain. If someone links to a community post or discussion and it's on a subdomain or another domain, then the main website will get little benefit.

Point: However, there are two times when a subdomain (or another root domain) may be better:

1. Creating a part of the website that will be less secure than the main website. Common example: A website has very confidential information, so they add a blog by putting Wordpress on a subdomain because Wordpress is less secure.

2. Very different design. It's a lot easier to have a completely-different design on a subdomain rather than in a subfolder on the main website.

Still, I'd suggest putting everything under the same root domain whenever possible. I hope this helps!

Dr. Pete and others answered a similar question here. I agree with their sentiments: no-index any pages that may even come close to seeming "thin" or duplicates of other similar pages. Following Panda, you just don't want to risk it.

The basic theory is that as you go down a website's hierarchy, the more you go from short-tail, general themes to long-tail, specific things. Here's the rough idea:

• Home Page -- very general short-tail
• Blog (or other main section page) -- general and short-tail
• Post Category (or a section subpage) -- specific and long-tail
• Blog Post -- very specific and long-tail

Basically, items like blog posts should ideally be the best sources of authoritative information on very specific topics such as a post each on "international seo," "e-commerce seo," and "b2b seo." All of these posts could be within a category of "seo strategy" for which the category page would aim to rank.

As far as click-through rate -- it depends on the keyword. You should aim to give whatever will address the user intent behind a given search query. The more that the query is very, very specific, the more that it should probably be targeted by a specific post. The more that it is a general, informational query, the more that users may want to be taken to a collection of posts.

Now, I wouldn't know what to suggest for your website because I have not seen it. But I hope this helps!

I would advise against it for one simple reason: You would be directly violating Google's guidelines and setting both you and your clients up for potential penalties.

Google states: Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

If you actively build a do-follow link on another site for the purposes of affecting search results, then you are doing exactly this.

Thumbed-up for being what I would do!

I hear a potential YouMoz post?

Footer links may not refer a lot of valuable traffic. But other types of pages could. For example: I'm sure the businesses that are on Moz's recommended list get leads. Pages with similar types of (no-follow) links could do the same (rather than footer links).

Just a couple thoughts off the top of my head:

1. Double-check all technical international SEO issues and ensure that the robots.txt file is not mistakenly blocking any desired pages.

2. Make sure that you have a separate Google Webmaster Tools setup for each root domain / subdomain / subdirectory (however you have set up the international sites) and have submitted an individual XML sitemap for each one. Also make sure that the geographical targeting in each GWT setup is set to the desired country.

3. If Google is only indexing a small percentage of a site's pages, it is often because Google is thinking (accurately or not) that a site has duplicate content. "Duplicate content" is not a penalty per se -- it is when Google, for example, sees two pages that are very similar and then indexes only one of them so as to not provide redundant pages in search results.

Example: Say that you have an e-commerce product that has ten variations (such as color). The content of each variation page would often be very similar except, for, the listed color. In the case, you would want to use a rel=canonical tag on all variation pages that points to the main page for that product. (In other words, you don't want all of those pages to be indexed, and Google often would not index them anyway.)

Most likely, I would use a tool such as Moz or any other SEO software to crawl the site and see if any duplicate-content issues are present. Once these are addressed (if the problem exists), then Google will likely crawl and index your sites more thoroughly and accurately.

I hope this helps -- good luck!