Duplicated content multi language / regional websites
-
Hi Guys,
I know this question has been asked a lot, but I wanted to double check this since I just read a comment of Gianluca Fiorelli (https://moz.com/community/q/can-we-publish-duplicate-content-on-multi-regional-website-blogs) about this topic which made me doubt my research.
The case:
A Dutch website (.nl) wants a .be version because of conversion reasons. They want to duplicate the Dutch website since they speak Dutch in large parts of both countries.
They are willing to implement the following changes:
- - Href lang tags
- - Possible a Local Phone number
- - Possible a Local translation of the menu
- - Language meta tag (for Bing)
Optional they are willing to take the following steps:
- - Crosslinking every page though a language flag or similar navigation in the header.
- - Invest in gaining local .be backlinks
- - Change the server location for both websites so the match there country (Isn't neccessery in my opinion since the ccTLD should make this irrelevant).
The content on the website will at least be 95% duplicated. They would like to score with there .be in Belgium and with there .nl in The Netherlands. Are these steps enough to make sure .be gets shown for the quarry’s from Belgium and the .nl for the search quarry’s from the Netherlands?
Or would this cause a duplicated content issue resulting in filtering out version? If that’s the case we should use the canonical tag and we can’t rank the .be version of the website.
Note: this company is looking for a quick conversion rate win. They won’t invest in rewriting every page and/or blog. The less effort they have to put in this the better (I know it's cursing when talking about SEO). Gaining local backlinks would bring a lot of costs with it for example.
I would love to hear from you guys.
Best regards,
Bob van Biezen
-
Thanks, valuable advice! I will put it to good use.
-
Bob,
It depends on the category & type of product. I remember a Dutch site selling shutters who just put the NL content on a BE domain - problem was that in Belgium we don't use this word when looking for this type of product and hence Google wasn't showing the site (they did rank pos. 1 for shutters in Belgium but probably with 0 traffic)
You don't have to rewrite the content for Google - but it would probably be a good idea to let a Flemish person check the content. If it's just a small word here and there it's no problem - if it's about your main keywords then it's an issue
To reply to your other question - when searching in BE I quite often get NL results if Google doesn't find a good BE result or the NL site is just better. You could just put the content on the be domain - and see if it brings results (even without doing the cross-linking - although I think that would be a useful feature). Belgian backlinks will always help - but it will take time & effort. Take a trial & error approach - there is no risk - if it doesn't work you can always improve later on.
Dirk
-
Thanks for your comment Dirk!
Rewriting the content would be the best case scenario. Do you think it's a absolute must to rewrite those words (let's say, because Google would els filter out the .be domain if it's a exact copy) or would it be an extra to make the website convert even better and add a extra trust signal to Google?
It would probably be a pain in the ass for this webshop to check all there product descriptions for any possible words to change. They would probably not launch the .be website if it would take them a week or two to go through all the pages.
-
Thanks for both of your opinions! Since this client is looking for the quickest fix possible, what is your opinion on the optional points:
- Crosslinking every page though a language flag or similar navigation in the header.
- Invest in gaining local .be backlinks
Do you think they are neccessary or add enough extra value to justify the extra costs (especialy for the extra backlinks)?
-
I agree with Jordan on this - shouldn't cause troubles.
Just make sure that you at least adapt the wording on the site - we might both speak dutch but not all the words have the same meaning & we don't use the same words to describe the same things. As an example - in Belgium we like "konfituur" - you prefer "jam" - pretty useless to try put a page optimised for "jam" in Belgium as nobody will look for it.
Dirk
-
Google has stated duplicate content for international sites is generally not an issue as long as the content is for different users in different countries. With the steps you have previously outlined I believe you should be fine.
Hope this helps some.
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
-
Wrong target content within the SERP regarding language
Hi everyone I'm currently under an SEO issue and wish some advices about it. My problem is that, Google doesn't show the great pages within the SERPs regarding the languages. In fact, I translated some content in Italian, German, French etc ... When someone use the branding name of the project to seek out it by google, if this guy is French, German, music or something else, Google shows English version within the results. I in fact would really like google showing the German version for a German guy within the SERP ... I already made properly my hreflang tags. Some tips to repair it? Thanks tons in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fktos.tam.906n0 -
Should I have multiple websites for my different brands or one main website with different tabs/areas?
My client creates apps. As well as the apps they create themselves, they have made some of their own that cover various different topics. Currently they have individual websites for each of these apps, and a website for their app making business. They are asking whether they should just have one website - their app building site, which also includes information about the two apps they've built themselves. My feeling is it's better to keep them separate. The app building site is trying to appeal to a B2B audience and gain business to build new apps. AppA is trying to help carehomes and carers to streamline their business, and AppB is trying to help workplace and employee welfare. Combining them all will mean lots of mixed messaging/keywords even if we have dedicated areas on the site. I also think it will limit how much content we can create on each without being completely overwhelming for the user. If we keep them all separate then we can have a very clear user journey. I would of course recommend having blog posts or some sort of landing page to link to AppA and AppB's websites. Thoughts? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
Duplicate content across domains?
Does anyone have suggestions for managing duplicate product/solution website content across domains? (specifically parent/child company domains) Is it advisable to do this? Will it hurt either domain? Any best practices when going down this path?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pilgrimquality0 -
Same product in different categories and duplicate content issues
Hi,I have some questions related to duplicate content on e-commerce websites. 1)If a single product goes to multiple categories (eg. A black elegant dress could be listed in two categories like "black dresses" and "elegant dresses") is it considered duplicate content even if the product url is unique? e.g www.website.com/black-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/elegant-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/black-elegant-dress unique url > this is the way my products urls look like Does google perceive this as duplicated content? The path to the content is only one, so it shouldn't be seen as duplicated content, though the product is repeated in different categories.This is the most important concern I actually have. It is a small thing but if I set this wrong all website would be affected and thus penalised, so I need to know how I can handle it. 2- I am using wordpress + woocommerce. The website is built with categories and subcategories. When I create a product in the product page backend is it advisable to select just the lowest subcategory or is it better to select both main category and subcategory in which the product belongs? I usually select the subcategory alone. Looking forward to your reply and suggestions. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cinzia091 -
Contextual FAQ and FAQ Page, is this duplicate content?
Hi Mozzers, On my website, I have a FAQ Page (with the questions-responses of all the themes (prices, products,...)of my website) and I would like to add some thematical faq on the pages of my website. For example : adding the faq about pricing on my pricing page,... Is this duplicate content? Thank you for your help, regards. Jonathan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanLeplang0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
All Thin Content removed and duplicate content replaced. But still no success?
Good morning, Over the last three months i have gone about replacing and removing all the duplicate content (1000+ page) from our site top4office.co.uk. Now it been just under 2 months since we made all the changes and we still are not showing any improvements in the SERPS. Can anyone tell me why we aren't making any progress or spot something we are not doing correctly? Another problem is that although we have removed 3000+ pages using the removal tool searching site:top4office.co.uk still shows 2800 pages indexed (before there was 3500). Look forward to your responses!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apogeecorp0 -
Best Structure for Multi-Language/International Website
We are getting ready to do a total redsign of our website, which is a multi-language global website (www.hurco.com). Today we use an ip address lookup to determine country of origin and redirect to say hurco.de for Germany. The main reason for this was that our German division was afraid that their potential customers were going to the hurco.com site and seeing product that was not available to them. Is there a better way from an SEO standpoint to structure our website? Should we have all hurco.com traffic goto a country selection page and let them go there manually? Other good practices we should follow? Would you structure the entire site as //www.hurco.com/en-us or /en-canada (language and country) and then have all international domains 301 redirect to the proper one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fassnachtp0