Cross domain canonical issue
-
Hello fella SEOs!
I have a very intriguing question concerning different TLDs across the same domain. For eg: www.mainwebsite.com, www.mainwebsite.eu, www.mainwebsite.au, www.mainwebsite.co.uk etc... Now, assuming that all these websites are similar in terms of content, will our lovely friend Google consider all these TLDs as only one and unique domain or will this cause a duplicate content problem? If yes, then how should I fix it?
Thnx for your precious help guys!
-
SEOBandits... one thing is what examples Google presents and another the reality.
The hreflang annotations can be used in every international or multilingual SEO option:
- ccTlds;
- Subdomains;
- Subfolders
Regarding your fear re: Duplicated Content, the hreflang annotations substantially help avoiding this issue, because you are telling Google that those contents may look substantially or entirely identical to it, but they are meant for different users in different geo-location, hence they are not to be considered as duplicates.
-
Hi Oleg,
Thanks for your response.
However, I'm still doubtful because according to Google, the hreflang tag is mostly used when you have different sub-domains or directories such as es.mysite.com or www.mysite.com/es/ and so on.
In my case, I will have one single website (in English) but with different TLDs like www.mysite.com for the US, www.mysite.co.uk for UK, www.mysite.com.au for Australia. However, Google does no make any mention about the usage of hreflang in this particular case.
What I want is that Google pick up and display the correct TLD according to the user's location but I really fear that duplicate content may be a serious issue. I've by doing research for days and I'm unable to find a relevant answer.
-
You should use the hreflang tag to tell google that each of these sites are the same pages but should be presented to users in different locations.
So you would have en-uk, en-us, en-au, etc.
If you implement those tags, you should be fine, If not, google will pick up on it as duplicate content.
-
Google will not treat it as one unique domain.
Best thing you can hope for is that google treats each country domain as the local domain. If all of those are in the same language you cannot trust google to understand.
So please reconsider using the TLD structure like this. Consider a mainwebsite.com/eu mainwebsite.com/au mainwebsite.com/uk structure. This makes life much more easy and predictable. and duplicate content is less of an issue.
In all cases please emphasize to google that you have the englisch language dedicated to a geographic area.
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
-
Canonical error from Google
Moz couldn't explain this properly and I don't understand how to fix it. Google emailed this morning saying "Alternate page with proper canonical tag." Moz also kinda complains about the main URL and the main URL/index.html being duplicate. Of course they are. The main URL doesn't work without the index.html page. What am I missing? How can I fix this to eliminate this duplicate problem which to me isn't a problem?
Technical SEO | | RVForce0 -
Website indexing issues
My website is being indexed with both https - https with www. and no leader at all. example. https//www.example.com and https//example.com and example.com 3 different versions are being indexed. How would I begin resolving this? Hosting?
Technical SEO | | DigitalRipples0 -
Which domain we should continue with?
Hello All, We are working with a client who had manual penalty from Google. We worked on that and now penalty has been removed. Client had already started working on the new domain and now the big dilemma is- Which domain should we continue with? Old or New? We are suggesting them to continue with the old one as that domain had good PR, good backlinks, better visibility on their social profiles etc. What do you suggest? any inputs are highly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | sachin-sv0 -
Best Practice - Disavow tool for non-canonical domain, 301 Redirect
The Situation: We submitted to the Disavow tool for a client who (we think) had an algorithmic penalty because of their backlink profile. However, their domain is non-canonical. We only had access to http://clientswebsite.com in Webmaster Tools, so we only submitted the disavow.txt for that domain. Also, we have been recommending (for months - pre disavow) they redirect from http://clientswebsite.com to http://www.clientswebsite.com, but aren't sure how to move forward because of the already submitted disavow for the non-www site. 1.) If we redirect to www. will the submitted disavow transfer or follow the redirect? 2.) If not, can we simply re-submit the disavow for the www. domain before or after we redirect? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | thebenro0 -
301s vs. rel=canonical for duplicate content across domains
Howdy mozzers, I just took on a telecommunications client who has spent the last few years acquiring smaller communications companies. When they took over these companies, they simply duplicated their site at all the old domains, resulting in a bunch of sites across the web with the exact same content. Obviously I'd like them all 301'd to their main site, but I'm getting push back. Am I OK to simply plug in rel=canonical tags across the duplicate sites? All the content is literally exactly the same. Thanks as always
Technical SEO | | jamesm5i0 -
Keyword in Domain or not?
My on page optimization grade is an "A" with the following factors; Factor Overview <dl class="scoreboard clearfix"> <dt>Critical Factors</dt> <dd>4 / 4</dd> <dt>High Importance Factors</dt> <dd>7 / 7</dd> <dt>Moderate Importance Factors</dt> <dd>8 / 9</dd> <dt>Low Importance Factors</dt> <dd>11 / 11</dd> <dt>Optional Factors</dt> <dd>5 / 5</dd> </dl> The main thing I appear to be missing is keywords in my URL. How truly important is that in today's SEO world and how much time or ranking would be lost if I do not have control to change the external links to my website if I decided to migrate to a keyword relevant url?
Technical SEO | | classa0 -
How I implement the cross domain rel canonical?
I just watched the WBF on cross domain rel canonicals. I understand the concept, but not sure how I go about actually doing the rel canonical? If I have www.mysite.com and someone we just partnered with, www.othersite.com wants to create new pages and use my content, what will the rel canonical tag look like on www.othersite.com? Do I need to also put this tag on www.mysite.com? I want to make sure each of my pages that the other site is copying is getting the "SEO credit."
Technical SEO | | NueMD0 -
Top Level Domains
Howdy Everyone, I have a website that will span multiple countries. The content served will be different for each country. As such, I've acquired the top level domains for different countries. I want to map the cop level domains (e.g. domain.co.uk) to uk.domain.com for development purposes (LinkedIn does this). I'm curious to know whether this is adviseable and if mapping a country-specific TLD to a subdomain will maintain local SEO value. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RADMKT-SEO0