Cross domain rel alternate, will it help or hurt?

[MarloSchneider]

I have a website that has similar pages on a US version and a UK version. Currently we want Uk traffic to go to the US, but the US domain is so strong it is outranking the UK in the UK.

We want to try using rel alternate but have some concerns. Currently for some of our keywords US is #1, UK is #4. If we implement rel alternate, will it just remove our US page? We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot and lose traffic. Is this worth doing, will it just remove our US ranking and our double listing?

Any anecdotes, experiences or opinions are appreciated. Thanks.

[Aleyda]

Hi Spencer,

The rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag inclusion along with the Geotargeting option in Google Webmaster Tools (if the websites are not ccTLDs but generic domains) are solutions for these situations: When you have two websites targeting different countries with the same language and they're competing with each other in SERPs, cannibalizing their opportunities and that might end up also with content duplication issues at some point.

About your concern: "Currently for some of our keywords US is #1, UK is #4. If we implement rel alternate, will it just remove our US page".

Your US website would be removed for the UK search result pages indeed and although in the short term this might seem as counterproductive, the reality is that this result from a relevancy perspective doesn't belong there since you already have your UK website targeting those users especially.

This also means that you can also be losing opportunity by having UK users going to the US version that is not as relevant for them, so their experience can be poorer and the conversions might not be the same. Additionally, as I mentioned before you might end-up suffering from content cannibalization / duplication issues with both websites showing the same or very similar content without giving signals to Google that they're not really duplicates but two versions targeting different audiences.

Because the previous in the long-run the best is that you make the most out of your international Web versions (country versions in this case) and give the necessary signals to Google so these start ranking in these countries search results instead.

In case your US version is a .com domain and it's also attracting rankings, organic traffic and conversions from abroad, excluding the UK (for which you have your own UK website version) then you can leave that website without a specific geolocalization in Google Webmaster Tools and just specifying the language in the hreflang attribute (not the country) but if you have a specific website version for the UK then you should definitely specify that this website (whether it's a .uk ccTLD, subdirectory, subdomain or another generic domain) is geotargeting to this country.

I hope this helps!

[Chris.Menke]

According to Google, here's when rel="alternate" hrefland="x" is recommended:

• You translate only the template of your page, such as the navigation and footer, and keep the main content in a single language. This is common on pages that feature user-generated content, like a forum post.
• Your pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but the content has small regional variations. For example, you might have English-language content targeted at readers in the US, GB, and Ireland.
• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.