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.
How to avoid duplication across multiple country domains
-
Here's the scenario:
- I have a client currently running one Shopify site (AU)
- They want to launch three more country domains (US, UK and EU)
- They want each to be a standalone site, primarily so the customers can purchase in their local currency, which is not possible from a single Shopify site
- The inventory is all from the same source
- The product desscriptions will all be the same as well
Question: How do we avoid content duplication (ie. how will canonical tags work in this scenario)?
-
No problem. Your best bet would be to avoid subdomains and have separate entities via ccTLD as you've mentioned is the plan. You could do a sub-directory structure (.com/au, .com/us, etc..) but honestly that gets pretty messy. I've got a client that has some countries on different ccTLDs and some that share a TLD, and the ones that share the .com are the messy ones.
-
Hey Logan,
Thanks for clarification on the hreflang tags - sounds good.
Re the .eu TLD, the client is keen to go this route just to enable Euro currency in the checkout. But I agree it is sub-optimal. If there is sufficient business case (ie. traffic), then I will suggest .fr, .de, etc. I believe the Langify app in Shopify works well. Otherwise, I might suggest .com in US$ for all countries other than Aus and UK.
Also wondering on your thoughts re domainuk.com, versus domain.co.uk?
-
You can specify English as the language for each one. The tag's main purpose is language, but it has deeper implications than that. The hreflang tags and Search Console specification will still help your .co.uk URLs in google.co.uk, your .com URLs in Google.com, and your .com.au URLs in google.com.au.
Regarding your .eu TLD, you might need to rethink that strategy. The primary language in Aus, UK, and US is English, so the plan you've laid out will be fine for those countries. But when you get into a .eu domain, there is no Google.eu and there's no single primary language spoken throughout. Serving up English content to everyone in Europe is sub-par UX since there's a plethora of languages in the region.
-
Furthermore, it appears that region targetting only works for specific countries ('eu' is not an option).
So it appears that the proposed solution isn't going to achieve the desired outcome after all:
- because the hreflang tags are intended for different languages and all four of our sites will be in English
- because 'eu' is not recognised by the tags
Anyone out there got a solution?
-
Hi Logan,
OK, there's a possible gotcha here. All four sites (.com, au, uk and eu) will be in English. So content will be identical. The purpose of the hreflang tags seems to be for multi-language versions of the same site. This is not the case here. The primary reason for country specific TLDs is just to allow customers to transact in their local currency, but also to be indexed in the local version of Google.
Make sense?
-
Happy to help!
-
That's very helpful - many thanks Logan
-
Hi,
There's a couple things you'll need to do. First is to set up a Search Console account for each TLD version of your domain. Once you've setup and verified, you'll want to specify the target country for each. To do this, go to Search Traffic on the left nav, then click International Targeting, then head to the Country tab. Set each for its respective domain.
Next, you'll need to implement hreflang tags. They work similar to canonical tags, but instead of telling search engines the preferential version of the content, these tags point them to the other country/language versions. Everything you need to know about this tag can be found here: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/hreflang-tag.
These two actions will help the country-specific versions of Google serve up the appropriate versions of your content and avoid getting dinged for dupes.
Hope that's helpful!
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
-
Moving from single domain to multiple CCTLDs
Hi, I have a website targeting 3 markets (and therefor 3 languages). I was currently using a single domain with each market being targeted in the following format: www.website.com/pl
International SEO | | cellydy
www.website.com/de
www.website.com/hu It's clear to me by looking at organic results, that in my industry (Real Estate) Google is putting a large emphasis on local businesses and local domains. Top 10 organic results for all my keywords in all markets have country specific CCTLDs. I decided to migrate from a single domain strategy to a multi domain strategy. I own the domains. The new structure is www.website.com/pl -> www.website.pl
www.website.com/de -> www.website.de
www.website.com/hu -> www.website.hu All the website have been added to google search console and 301 redirects are in place and working correctly. The pages are all interlinked and have rel=alternate to each other. The sitemaps are all done correctly. My question is how do I tell Google about this. The change of address feature only works for changing one domain to one other domain. It's been a week and the old www.website.com domain is still showing up (even considering 301 redirects). Or do I just need to be patient and wait it out? Any tips?0 -
How to Localise per Region (Europe, America, APAC, EMEI) and not per country as best SEO practise?
Hi SEO expertises! I am currently working with a client that initially have an English website targeting UK users but want to expand their market into four new regions (Europe, America, APAC and EMEI) keeping English as a main language. I would like to request your help here as I told the client ISO location and hreflang it will be just possible per language and they must need to localise each English region with local keywords, however I would like to double check if it will be any way (Sitemap, Hreflang) we can tell Google we are targeting per region and not per country? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | | Atalig20 -
Targeting Countries in the Middle East
Hi guys, I have a client based in the Middle East using a generic top level domain (.com), and they want to target multiple countries in the GCC (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar etc). I’m thinking that using the hreflang tag would be the best solution here, however the pages will mostly have the exact same content. There will only be slight changes on some pages in terms of using localised title tags [client service] followed by [targeted country], h1's and meta descriptions. Is this the correct approach? And if so should this be implemented side wide or can it be implemented on selected pages only? The site will be in English only.
International SEO | | Jbeetle0 -
Multiple hreflang tags
I'm trying to advise on the multi country seo for a site in terms of markup. We've already decided on using sub folders rather than separate sites or subdomains due to an established link profile and good rankings in all countries. The question is in relation to the homepage. Obviously this is the page most likely to rank well in any country (the site is a .com). But can multiple hreflang tags be put on the page to say that the page targets many countries? Or would leaving the hreflang tag off allow it to just rank for all countries? Also do Yahoo and Bing follow hreflang tags? I can't find any info on this anywhere! Thanks very much in advance for any help!
International SEO | | Bdig0 -
CcTLD and duplicate content
Hello people, I would like some help with this question... I am building 2 websites www.domain.com.ec and www.domain.com , both on the same languages, and same content, but the domain.com.ec will show a different price for local ecommerce and focus to target Ecuador... the www.domain.com will sell on all the other spanish languages countries with a fob price... So my question ... is there any way to fail into the duplicate content on the google eyes? What could be the best way to do it? Using the multistore option, with different cctld could change anything? Thank you guys
International SEO | | lans27870 -
How can I see what my web site looks like from a different country?
I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!
International SEO | | Dennis-529610 -
What countries does Google crawl from? Is it only US or do they crawl from Europe and Asia, etc.?
Where does Google crawl the web from? Is it in the US only, or do they do it from a European base too? The reason for asking is for GeoIP redirection. For example, if a website is using GeoIP redirection to redirect all US traffic to a .com site and all EU traffic to a .co.uk site, will Google ever see the .co.uk site?
International SEO | | Envoke-Marketing2 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0