Concerns about duplicate content issues with australian and us version of website

[djo-283669]

My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years.  The url is www.betterbraces.com.  We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au.

The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website.  The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products.  The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website.

To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website.

I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues.  However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related.

I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Alison French

[irvingw]

Ryan, with the perfect answer yet again.

You always beat me to it man! Keep up the good advice!

[RyanKent]

Hi Alison.

Your issue is common and no, there should not be any problems IF you properly configure both sites as follows:

1. Set your geographic target for the .com site to US and the .com.au site to Australia. This is inferred but it is best to specify in your case.

2. Use the language meta codes in your headers. EN-US for the US site and EN-AU for the Australian site.

3. You already mentioned using the correct currency on the Australian site. You also should ensure all other units of measurement are adjusted. For example, miles vs kilometres, etc.

4. Spelling should be changed as appropriate. For example, center vs centre.

5. Word choices should be adjusted for Australian culture. Australians might say "Prices are much dearer" where an American wont understand what that means. In the US one would say "Prices are much higher".

Your hosting is fine from a SEO standpoint as long as the pages load quickly. I have worked with people from Australia before and there is a noticeable difference in page load speeds, especially when working with detailed images such as large images of smiles and teeth. I would recommend using YSlow, PageSpeed or other tools and determining your page load speed from Australia. If it is slow, consider hosting in Australia.