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.

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      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.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • 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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How to resolve duplicate content issues when using Geo-targeted Subfolders to seperate US and CAN

    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.

    How to resolve duplicate content issues when using Geo-targeted Subfolders to seperate US and CAN

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    3
    1081
    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.
    • jyoung222
      jyoung222 last edited by

      A client of mine is about to launch into the USA market (currently only operating in Canada) and they are trying to find the best way to geo-target.  We recommended they go with the geo-targeted subfolder approach (___.com and ___.com/ca).

      I'm looking for any ways to assist in not getting these pages flagged for duplicate content.

      Your help is greatly appreciated.

      Thanks!

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

        Presuming your client is planning on launching in the US using largely the same content, perhaps with minor regional amendments, then this would be an ideal situation to use hreflang.

        There is plenty out there on correct use and implementation of this. You could start be reading this article. Hope this helps.

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

          Simple answer would be unique content or canonical urls.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 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

          • nchlondon

            Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?

            Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchlondon
            0
          • ajiabs

            Duplicate content due to parked domains

            I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names.  So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs
            0
          • iQi

            Duplicate content on recruitment website

            Hi everyone, It seems that Panda 4.2 has hit some industries more than others. I just started working on a website, that has no manual action, but the organic traffic has dropped massively in the last few months. Their external linking profile seems to be fine, but I suspect usability issues, especially the duplication may be the reason. The website is a recruitment website in a specific industry only. However, they posts jobs for their clients, that can be very similar, and in the same time they can have 20 jobs with the same title and very similar job descriptions. The website currently have over 200 pages with potential duplicate content. Additionally, these jobs get posted on job portals, with the same content (Happens automatically through a feed). The questions here are: How bad would this be for the website usability, and would it be the reason the traffic went down? Is this the affect of Panda 4.2 that is still rolling What can be done to resolve these issues? Thank you in advance.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iQi
            0
          • AMHC

            Removing duplicate content

            Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC
            0
          • dancape

            Using the same content on different TLD's

            HI Everyone, We have clients for whom we are going to work with in different countries but sometimes with the same  language. For example we might have a client in a competitive niche working in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Swiss German) ie we're going to potentially rewrite our website three times in German, We're thinking of using Google's href lang tags and use pretty much the same content - is this a safe option, has anyone actually tries this successfully or otherwise? All answers appreciated. Cheers, Mel.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape
            1
          • BobAnderson

            Tabs and duplicate content?

            We own this site http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ and just a little concerned as I right clicked open in new tab on the tab content section and it went to a new page For example if you right click on the price tab and click open in new tab you will end up with the url
            http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/#tabThree Does this mean that our content is being duplicated onto another page? If so what should I do?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson
            0
          • team_tic

            International SEO - cannibalisation and duplicate content

            Hello all, I look after (in house) 3 domains for one niche travel business across three TLDs: .com .com.au and co.uk and a fourth domain on a co.nz TLD which was recently removed from Googles index. Symptoms: For the past 12 months we have been experiencing canibalisation in the SERPs (namely .com.au being rendered in .com) and Panda related ranking devaluations between our .com site and com.au site. Around 12 months ago the .com TLD was hit hard (80% drop in target KWs) by Panda (probably) and we began to action the below changes. Around 6 weeks ago our .com TLD saw big overnight increases in rankings (to date a 70% averaged increase). However, almost to the same percentage we saw in the .com TLD we suffered significant  drops in our .com.au rankings. Basically Google seemed to switch its attention from .com TLD to the .com.au TLD. Note: Each TLD is over 6 years old, we've never proactively gone after links (Penguin) and have always aimed for quality in an often spammy industry. **Have done: ** Adding HREF LANG markup to all pages on all domain Each TLD uses local vernacular e.g for the .com site is American Each TLD has pricing in the regional currency Each TLD has details of the respective local offices, the copy references the lacation, we have significant press coverage in each country like The Guardian for our .co.uk site and Sydney Morning Herlad for our Australia site Targeting each site to its respective market in WMT Each TLDs core-pages (within 3 clicks of the primary nav) are 100% unique We're continuing to re-write and publish unique content to each TLD on a weekly basis As the .co.nz site drove such little traffic re-wrting we added no-idex and the TLD has almost compelte dissapread (16% of pages remain) from the SERPs. XML sitemaps Google + profile for each TLD **Have not done: ** Hosted each TLD on a local server Around 600 pages per TLD are duplicated across all TLDs (roughly 50% of all content). These are way down the IA but still duplicated. Images/video sources from local servers Added address and contact details using SCHEMA markup Any help, advice or just validation on this subject would be appreciated! Kian

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | team_tic
            1
          • AxialDev

            How do I geo-target continents & avoid duplicate content?

            Hi everyone, We have a website which will have content tailored for a few locations: USA: www.site.com
            Europe EN: www.site.com/eu
            Canada FR: www.site.com/fr-ca Link hreflang and  the GWT option are designed for countries. I expect a fair amount of duplicate content; the only differences will be in product selection and prices. What are my options to tell Google that it should serve www.site.com/eu in Europe instead of www.site.com? We are not targeting a particular country on that continent. Thanks!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxialDev
            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
          • Digital Marketers
          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.