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.
.ca and. com domains
-
Hello,
currently the main site im working on is a .com, but have the .ca version purchased from register.com. should i have this setup to redirect to the .com site. will google see these as dup content. We have the .ca for our canadian customers but both sites are identical. Thank you
-
There's not really much more I can tell you without seeing and checking the actual site, LB.
If you're not comfortable listing the site address here publicly, you can send it to me in a PM (personal message) if that's better.
Otherwise it's just going to be too many back and forth messages for me to be certain I'm clear how your site & domains are configured.
P.
P.S. I appreciate you marking a couple of good answers!
-
With the current way that we have it setup now would we have to worry about duplicate issues? If I search on our xxxxxx.ca domain, regardless of where we are on the site is always .ca none of the custom pages or sub directories show.
Thanks for all of your help!
-
Glad to help!
As far as register.com's Premium Web Site Forwarding, I'm not familiar with it. But from the quick look I took, it's an INCREDIBLY expensive way to do something that is standard with almost all other domain registrars.
The cost of their domains is exorbitantly high ($79/3 years from what I see) plus they're charging an extra $50/yr to be able to do simple domain redirecting. Most registrars charge about $12.00/yr to do all that for a .ca domain.
Sorry, didn't want to muddy the waters, but thought you should know those prices are crazy high.
For specific info on how to do the redirects, you should get register.com's support to help you. You just want to be certain to ask that they show you how to create 301 redirects (only 301 - not 302 or CName or anything else) as I mentioned.
Then to confirm, 24 hours after the redirects have been done, use a header-checking tool to test each of yoursite.ca and www.yoursite.ca. The tool should show a 301 redirect leading to a "200 OK" response for each.
Paul
-
First, I'm going to assume the canonical version of your .com website is www.yoursite.com. This assumes that the URL yoursite.com (no www.) is already 301-redirected to the www version.
In that case, I'd create a page at www.yoursite.com/canada (or even /canada-company-name). On that page, I'd create a "homepage" that is similar in design to your regular homepage, but that contains a whole lot of copy specific to the Canadian market. It should NOT be a direct copy of the regular homepage.
Then, I'd 301 redirect yoursite.ca and www.yoursite.ca to www.yoursite.com/canada
Lastly, I'd put a link "Canadian Customers" (or equivalent, maybe with a small CDN flag icon) somewhere at the top of your www.yoursite.com pages pointing to the /canada page. That way, even when a Canadian customer finds the .com site through search, there's a chance they'll notice the Canadian info.
Paul
-
We are currently using the Premium Web Site Forwarding from Register.com.
Would this still cause a Dup content issue?
Thanks again
-
Sorry - dupe post. There's something wonky going on with Roger's server - returning a page error even though the comment posted.
-
hello
should I just create a custom page on my .com site thats says .ca?and mirrors my .com homepage? Also if i redirect should it be to the xxxxx.com or the www.xxxxxx.com?
thanks so much!
-
Just to be clear - when you say both sites are identical, do you mean that there is actually just one site that will have both the .com and .ca pointing to it?
If so, and as long as you correctly use a 301 redirect to point your .ca to the .com, you won't have any problem with duplicate content.
That's exactly the sort of issue 301 redirects are specifically designed to solve.
Just a tip for useability...
As a Canadian, when I get redirected to a US .com site, I'm often left to wonder whether the US company can actually serve me well in Canada.
You might want to consider pointing the .ca domain to a landing page on the .com site that functions as a "Canadian home page" and includes explanations to potential CDN customers about all the great ways you can take care of them.
- assurance that you ship inexpensively and efficiently to Canada
- whether pricing is listed in US or CDN dollars
- how service is provided to Canadian users if needed
- that your product meets Canadian safety standards, licensing etc if applicable
The landing page can graphically mimic the regular home page, but with enough Canadian-market-specific content to keep it from being a dupe of the regular home page.
Paul
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
-
How .ae and .com domain in SEO performance for UAE region?
I have a domain for my UAE based project called https://mydubaiseo.com/ and however, one of my colleagues suggested going with .ae option.
Technical SEO | | 0eup.ombitao
Whether if we change the domain like as suggested get earlier results than .com domain or what?\Which domain .com or .ae ranks faster in UAE location if the SEO strategies followed in the same way?0 -
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Help: buy domain from Tradenames.com?
Hello to all, I'm Silvia. I am writing to ask if any of you know this site: tradenames.com. It is a domains broker. They contacted my client and would like to sell the .com business domain (my client currently has the .it). Does anyone know them? Thanks you for your help.
Technical SEO | | advmedialab0 -
Moving my domain to weebly
I am thinking of moving my html website to weebly. They offer a 301 redirect for my domain name. Is that ok for SEO?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Umbrella company and multiple domains
I'm really sorry for asking this question yet again. I have searched through previous answers but couldn't see something exactly like this I think. There is a website called example .com. It is a sort of umbrella company for 4 other separate domains within it - 4 separate companies. The Home page of the "umbrella" company website is example.com. It is just an image with no content except navigation on it to direct to the 4 company websites. The other pages of website example.com are the 4 separate companies domains. So on the navigation bar there is : Home page = example.com company1page = company1domain.com company2page= company2domain.com etc. etc. Clicking "home" will take you back to example.com (which is just an image). How bad or good is this structure for SEO? Would you recommend any changes to help them rank better? The "home" page has no authority or links, and neither do 3 out of the 4 other domains. The 4 companies websites are independent in content (although theme is the same). What's bringing them altogether is under this umbrella website - example.com. Thank you
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Localized domains and duplicate content
Hey guys, In my company we are launching a new website and there's an issue it's been bothering me for a while. I'm sure you guys can help me out. I already have a website, let's say ABC.com I'm preparing a localized version of that website for the uk so we'll launch ABC.co.uk Basically the websites are going to be exactly the same with the difference of the homepage. They have a slightly different proposition. Using GeoIP I will redirect the UK traffic to ABC.co.uk and the rest of the traffic will still visit .com website. May google penalize this? The site itself it will be almost the same but the homepage. This may count as duplicate content even if I'm geo-targeting different regions so they will never overlap. Thanks in advance for you advice
Technical SEO | | fabrizzio0 -
Mobile Domain Setup
Hi, If I want to serve a subset of pages on my mobile set from my desktop site or the content is significantly different, i.e. it is not one to one or pages are a summarised version of the desktop, should I use m.site.com or is it still better to use site.com? Many thanks any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MarkChambers0 -
Multiple Domains, Same IP address, redirecting to preferred domain (301) -site is still indexed under wrong domains
Due to acquisitions over time and the merging of many microsites into one major site, we currently have 20+ TLD's pointing to the same IP address as our "preferred domain:" for our consolidated website http://goo.gl/gH33w. They are all set up as 301 redirects on apache - including both the www and non www versions. When we launched this consolidated website, (April 2010) we accidentally left the settings of our site open to accept any of our domains on the same IP. This was later fixed but unfortunately Google indexed our site under multiple of these URL's (ignoring the redirects) using the same content from our main website but swapping out the domain. We added some additional redirects on apache to redirect these individual pages pages indexed under the wrong domain to the same page under our main domain http://goo.gl/gH33w. This seemed to help resolve the issue and moved hundreds of pages off the index. However, in December of 2010 we made significant changes in our external dns for our ip addresses and now since December, we see pages indexed under these redirecting domains on the rise again. If you do a search query of : site:laboratoryid.com you will see a few hundred examples of pages indexed under the wrong domain. When you click on the link, it does redirect to the same page but under the preferred domain. So the redirect is working and has been confirmed as 301. But for some reason Google continues to crawl our site and index under this incorrect domains. Why is this? Is there a setting we are missing? These domain level and page level redirects should be decreasing the pages being indexed under the wrong domain but it appears it is doing the reverse. All of these old domains currently point to our production IP address where are preferred domain is also pointing. Could this be the issue? None of the pages indexed today are from the old version of these sites. They only seem to be the new content from the new site but not under the preferred domain. Any insight would be much appreciated because we have tried many things without success to get this resolved.
Technical SEO | | sboelter0