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  4. Rel canonical between mirrored domains

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Rel canonical between mirrored domains

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  • AlexSG
    AlexSG last edited by Jan 14, 2014, 4:22 AM

    Hi all & happy new near!

    I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice:

    I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...)  So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content.  I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern:

    Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp.

    I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
    -The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
    -The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations

    Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa?

    I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot!

    Best regards from Singapore!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Dr-Pete
      Dr-Pete Staff @AlexSG last edited by Jan 18, 2014, 9:07 PM Jan 18, 2014, 9:07 PM

      Wow - that's a huge impact. It's hard for me to believe this one change would have such an impact, but hopefully these new numbers stick.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AlexSG
        AlexSG @Dr-Pete last edited by Jan 18, 2014, 4:44 AM Jan 18, 2014, 4:44 AM

        Hi Dr. Peter,

        Just thought I would share the initial results of your suggestion because they appear to be so dramatic!

        I put it a rel=alternate tag on every page indicating the .edu.sg version of the URL for "en-sg" and the com version of the url for "en".

        From MozAnalytics: Before
        Rank 1-3: 4 keywords
        Rank 4-10: 21 keywords
        Rank 11-20: 3 keywords
        Rank 21-50: 2 keywords
        Rank 51+: 216 keywords

        From MozAnalytics: After
        Rank 1-3: 50 keywords!!!
        Rank 4-10: 19 keywords
        Rank 11-20: 3 keywords
        Rank 21-50: 13 keywords
        Rank 51+: 167 keywords

        That's pretty crazy in under a week - Not sure if its 'real' since I never personally went to check rankings on these keywords, but wow! If the MozAnalytics information is correct I am blown away!   Unfortunately its for a niche site in a tiny market so its not going to lead to fame and riches, but its still an amazing result!

        Thanks so much for the great advice 🙂

        Alex

        Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Jan 18, 2014, 9:07 PM Reply Quote 0
        • Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete Staff @AlexSG last edited by Jan 15, 2014, 2:30 PM Jan 15, 2014, 2:30 PM

          Happy to help - hope it does the trick.

          AlexSG 1 Reply Last reply Jan 18, 2014, 4:44 AM Reply Quote 1
          • AlexSG
            AlexSG last edited by Jan 15, 2014, 3:17 AM Jan 15, 2014, 3:17 AM

            Fantastic response Dr. Peter! Thanks for taking the time to explain and to suggest the rel="alternate" tag which I have now implemented in a little experiment.

            I very much enjoy your posts on the moz blog and thank you for all the indirect help they have given us in the past.

            Best regards,

            Alex

            Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Jan 15, 2014, 2:30 PM Reply Quote 0
            • Dr-Pete
              Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Jan 15, 2014, 3:17 AM Jan 14, 2014, 5:58 PM

              I'm not sure there's a one-sized-fits-all answer. If the .com is more geared to an audience outside of Singapore, and the .edu.sg site is more geared to the local audience you could set a region and/or language with rel="alternate" hreflang:

              https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

              This is a bit more subtle canonicalization signal that Google can use to sort out sites with language and/or regional copies (the regional aspect may be relevant even if both sites are in english).

              The next question would be: where does your traffic come from? If you want to consolidate, but most of your traffic is coming from outside of Singapore, then I'd probably stick with the .com - it still has a "generic" status. The .edu.sg may rank more strongly in Singapore but fall off everywhere else.

              I wouldn't worry much about the DMOZ link, especially if you have a solid link profile. DMOZ links have gotten buried over the years and typically don't carry nearly the value most people think. At some point, they could be a solid boost to a new site with a small link profile, but I think even those days are well behind us.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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