How to Target Other Countries Using TLDs?
-
I would like to know if it is possible (and beneficial) to target other countries using country-based TLDs?
When visiting a company website for instance, you often get redirected to your country's site. For instance, when you visit cafepress.com from Canada, you get redirected to cafepress.ca.
Since both websites (cafepress.com and cafepress.ca) have the same content, how they get away with it with no duplicate content issues?
-
Hi Stephane,
For just one or two pages, targeting different countries, on-page content might prove to be sufficient. That is, a page about companies in X field in the UK, listing UK companies with their addresses and telephone numbers, will give Google a range of signals to indicate that that content is most relevant to people from the UK.
That said, the page itself should not contain href lang information to indicate that it is for a Canadian market. If href lang information is included, it should specify the UK.
If the content is sitting on a .ca domain, it will be harder to show that the UK review page is for the UK - it would be better to place this sort of information on a generic TLD website.
The question of duplicate content between .com, .ca, .co.uk etc. sites is answered by geo-targeting, both using the ccTLDs and href lang tags. Google "ignores" duplicate content when the websites' tags tell it that although the content is the same, this version is for Canadians, this version is or Americans and this one over here is for Brits.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Jane
-
For different geos suggest the following -
- Use CCTLD
- Host the websites on geo specific servers (US website on a US server)
- Implement href language tags on the geo specific pages to avoid duplicate content issues
- Implement href language tags in the XML sitemap as well
- As a safety measure, implement self canonical tags
- Sajeet
-
Hi Stephane
I would take a look at hreflang and learn that.
To help you speed it up a little:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/hreflang-canonical-test/
Look for other posts by Aleyda as well.
-
-
Every cafepress domains have the exact same content for the most part.
-
Part of my website is a blog and I don't see the use of using a country-based TLD except if I'm going to host it in another country to increase performance.
That said, there's also a directory of companies accompanied by user reviews and various data. I would like to target other countries with this directory by listing only companies from these countries.
How would you suggest to handle this?
-
Some domains are generic, .com .net .org and others are geo targeted. So by geo targeting by TLD is only half the battle. Google states "we'll rely on several signals, including IP address, location information on the page, links to the page, and any relevant information from Google Places". Having an exact replica doesn't make sense but tweaking it to suit the country does.
So in the example provided above I think that they have all those "signals" Google is talking about there so it's two different sites targeting different SERPs. You'll notice that their home page titles are different just for starters, I'm sure they don't have exactly the same sites placed on two different domains.
Read more about this here:
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
-
Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.
I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice. Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also. What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it. It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain. Thanks
Technical SEO | | jarydcat10 -
International architecture: Country specific subfolders > domain mapping to tld
Hi Ive got a clients dev saying they are setting up with country/language specific subfolders (as i recommended) BUT now they are saying they want to set up on network.domain.com (for example) and then each language will have its own sub-folder BUT will be domain mapped to the TLD as and when they get them. I have asked them to clarify since sounds a bit strange since thought best to have domain.com then /uk and /us etc etc and sure ok to forward country specific TLD's to these subfolders. Its this new subdomain (network.) thats concerning me and mapping rather than forwarding (or is it the same thing) but anyone know off hand if above sounds ok or also thinks a bit strange or know issues with such a set up ? many thanks dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Should you use the keyword for your page in an image?
Hi there! I am currently working on building up the SEO ranking on a page using a specific keyword - dresses. Within this page, we have an online image library full of dresses which are then added to multiple pages determined by brand, colour, type etc for people to search. I am adding hundreds of images all of dresses - I wanted to know if I name these images using the keyword: for example 'dresses_1, 'dresses_2' - will that have a knock on effect on page I am trying to build up and optimise for the keyword 'dresses'??? Any help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Jaybeamer0 -
Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes
Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing
Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno0 -
How many keywords should I target?
Hi there I'm looking for advice from the community on how many keywords to target. What are the pros and cons of: focussing on the 40 keywords that we rank for already, with specific attention paid to those where we are on pages 2-5. Spread our link building / onsite optimisation work a little further - and continue to target all 280 keywords on our list as and when they are appropriate to target. I'd love to hear what strategies people recommend. Thanks
Technical SEO | | HeatherBakerTopLine0 -
Should Canonical be used if your site does not have any duplicate
Should canonical be used site wide even if my site is solid no duplicate content is generated. please explain your answer
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
When criteria do you use for external linking?
When linking out to external sources what criteria do you use? Also, do you ever add the URL in plain text instead to conserve link juice?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0