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.
Sites in multiple countries using same content question
-
Hey Moz,
I am looking to target international audiences. But I may have duplicate content. For example, I have article 123 on each domain listed below. Will each content rank separately (in US and UK and Canada) because of the domain?
The idea is to rank well in several different countries. But should I never have an article duplicated? Should we start from ground up creating articles per country? Some articles may apply to both! I guess this whole duplicate content thing is quite confusing to me.
I understand that I can submit to GWT and do geographic location and add rel=alternate tag but will that allow all of them to rank separately?
Please help and thanks so much!
Cole
-
Just asking.
-
Are you sure eyepaq?
** Yes. I have the same format implemented across several projects - big and small. All is perfect. I have a few cases when some domains are helping eachouther out – so when a new country is deployed it gets a small boost in that geo location due to the others. The approach was also confirmed by several trend analysis in Google in the google forum and at least one Google hangout and across the web in different articles.
If I had 5 domains so say .uk .fr .de .ie and .es and pasted the same 1000 words on each I would assume it would be duplicate content and wouldn't have equal rankings across all 5 domains, but I may be wrong?
** It won't be duplicate if you have the content in de in german and the content in uk in english. It will have the same message but it is not duplicate
Of course you won't have the same rankings since it's different competition in Germany and UK for example and also the signals, mainly links are counted different for each country. One link from x.de will count towards the de domain in a different way then y.co.uk linking to the your uk domain.I don't think Cole is talking about recreating the same article in different languages because then I would understand the use of the href-lang tag but I think he means the exact same article on separate domains, could be wrong here as well
*** if I understand correctly he is mainly concern about english content on different geo english based domains (uk, com, canada, co.nz, co au let's say) and for that - if it's the same content - he needs hreflang set for those and he is safe. Google will then rank co.uk domain and content in UK and not the canadian domain. He will also be safe with any "duplicate content issues" - although even without href lang there won’t be any.
-
Are you sure eyepaq?
If I had 5 domains so say .uk .fr .de .ie and .es and pasted the same 1000 words on each I would assume it would be duplicate content and wouldn't have equal rankings across all 5 domains, but I may be wrong?
I don't think Cole is talking about recreating the same article in different languages because then I would understand the use of the href-lang tag but I think he means the exact same article on separate domains, could be wrong here as well
@Colelusby - Is a sub-domain for each location on one domain out the question? So
uk.example.com, fr.example.com etc You can then tell WMTs the sub domain UK targets the UK and the fr targets France etc.
-
Yes, that's it
The use of hreflang has a lot of benefits and overall is very straight forward - google will understand how the structure is setup and you are safe.
Cheers.
-
Is that it?
The same article will rank it two different geographic locations and duplicate content won't hurt me?
I feel like that's too easy. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
Thanks!
-
HI,
In this case the use of hreflang is needed:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
As summary each version will have rel alternate hreflang set with hreflang="en-ca" for Canada for example, hreflang="en-us" for US and so on. (first is language and second geo location). So even if the language is the same, it's for a particular region as in some cases you might have some small differences in UK vs Au or Ca etc.
Whne you have a domain with example.ch, the hreflang will be hreflang="de-ch" .
Hope it helps.
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
-
Site-wide Canonical Rewrite Rule for Multiple Currency URL Parameters?
Hi Guys, I am currently working with an eCommerce site which has site-wide duplicate content caused by currency URL parameter variations. Example: https://www.marcb.com/ https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=3 https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=2 https://www.marcb.com/?setCurrencyId=1 My initial thought is to create a bunch of canonical tags which will pass on link equity to the core URL version. However I was wondering if there was a rule which could be implemented within the .htaccess file that will make the canonical site-wide without being so labour intensive. I also noticed that these URLs are being indexed in Google, so would it be worth setting a site-wide noindex to these variations also? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question
Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
Question about moving content from one site to another without a 301
I could use a second opinion about moving content from some inactive sites to my main site. Once upon a time, we had a handful of geotargeted websites set up targeting various cities that we serve. This was in addition to our main site, which was mostly targeted to our primary office and ranked great for those keywords. Our main site has plenty of authority, has been around for ages, etc. We built out these geo-targeted sites with some good landing pages and kept them active with regularly scheduled blog posts which were unique and either interesting or helpful. Although we had a little success with these, we eventually saw the light and realized that our main site was strong enough to rank for these cities as well, which made life a whole lot easier, not to mention a lot less spammy. We've got some good content on these other sites that I'd like to use on our main site, especially the blog posts. Now that I've got it through my head that there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand that I could just start moving this content over so long as I put a 301 redirect in place where the content used to be on these old sites. Which leads me to my question. Our SEO was careful not to have these other websites pointing to our main site to avoid looking like we were trying to do something shady from a link building perspective. His concern is that these redirects would undermine that effort and having a bunch of redirects from a half dozen sites could end up hurting us somehow. Do you think that is the case? What he is suggesting we do is remove all of the content that we'd like to use and use Webmaster Tools to request that this content be removed from the index. Then, after the sites have been recrawled, we'll check for ourselves to confirm they've been removed and proceed with using the content however we'd like. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
Where is the best place to put a sitemap for a site with local content?
I have a simple site that has cities as subdirectories (so URL is root/cityname). All of my content is localized for the city. My "root" page simply links to other cities. I very specifically want to rank for "topic" pages for each city and I'm trying to figure out where to put the sitemap so Google crawls everything most efficiently. I'm debating the following options, which one is better? Put the sitemap on the footer of "root" and link to all popular pages across cities. The advantage here is obviously that the links are one less click away from root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" (e.g. root/cityname) and include all topics for that city. This is how Yelp does it. The advantage here is that the content is "localized" but the disadvantage is it's further away from the root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" and include all topics across all cities. That way wherever Google comes into the site they'll be close to all topics I want to rank for. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Multiple sites in the same niche
Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry1 -
Multiple Keyword Research Questions, Help
Hello , I've been trying for several days to understand how keyword research works for a multi purpose website,I've read guides, articles even some chapters from the book" The Art of Seo" by O'Reilly and still no luck. It seems i can't wrap my head around keyword research,lets say I have a social gaming community website and I'm trying to rank it first on some low competition keywords + some long tail keywords.The website has functions like leaderboards, profiles,events, competitions,etc so it's not actually a news related website but it will have a blog. My website being on the games niche It would imply that I should target words that contain the word "Games" but this word generates millions of searches globally so ranking first its nearly impossible if the website is brand new. This made me pursue generic keywords formed with 2 / 3 words like fresh games, new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc which still generate lets say 30.000 searches globally each. Due to the different areas of the website like latest game events,latest games competitions,etc I'm confused If i should pursue website specific keywords like latest games events, fresh games events, latest games competitions, upcoming games competitions but these too generate 30.000 global searches each,so... 0.should i use generic keywords or keywords that include site features? So let's say I decide to pursue generic "games" keywords,due to a high competition based on the keyword I decide to go a layer deeper and for the keyword "fresh games" I obtain keywords like** "fresh games 2011,top fresh games 2011, upcoming fresh games** " and thus building a list of 30 keywords that contain " fresh games".If i do this for the rest of the keywords: ** new games, mmorpg games, fps games,etc** I end up with a list of 10.000 keywords or more since each keyword generates other keywords. Is this the correct approach ? since generating 10.000 keywords sounds a lot and I'm getting the feeling that It's not how it supposed to be done,like were would I insert 10.000 keywords? So how do I know which keywords to pick and aim in order to try to get no.1 ranking? and why those? How many keywords should I use? and where should i put them? since it's not a news website so writing a lot of articles isn't an option. Should I focus on 2 words keywords with around 10.000-30.000 seaches or 2 words keywords + long tail keywords with less traffic like 100 - 5000? Is there a guide for the Keyword Analysis Tool since if i enter "fresh new games" i get a 39% keyword difficulty,is that hard to rank? and I don't know what all those color mean since some of them have higher numbers then others that are found at the top and how can i get beat a website that has has rank 10. So hopefully with your help & by some miracle I will finally be able to build a keyword list. Thank you !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arching0