International SEO - How do I show correct SERP results in the UK and US?

[Katarina-Borovska]

Hi, Moz community.

I hope you’re all OK and keeping busy during this difficult period. I have a few questions about international SEO, specifically when it comes to ranking pages in the UK and the US simultaneously. We currently have 2 websites set-up which are aimed towards their respective countries. We have a ‘.com’ and a ‘.com/us’.

If anybody could help with the issues below, I would be very grateful. Thank you all.

Issues

• When looking in US Google search with a VPN, the title tag for our UK page appears in the SERP e.g. I will see:

• UK [Product Name] | [Brand]

• When checking the Google cache, the UK page version also appears

• This can cause a problem especially when I am creating title tags and meta descriptions that are unique from the UK versions

• However, when clicking through from the SERP link to the actual page, the US page appears as it should do. I find this very bizarre that it seems to show you the US page when you click through, but you see the UK version in the SERP when looking in the overall search results.

Current Set-Up

• Our UK and US page content is often very similar across our “.com” and “.com/us” websites and our US pages are canonicalised to their UK page versions to remove potential penalisation

• We have also added herflang to our UK and US pages

Query

• How do I show our US SERP as opposed to the UK version in US Google search?

My Theories/ Answers

• US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version

• Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions

• Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages

If anyone can help, it will be much appreciated. Many thanks all.

[katemorris]

Same to you! Happy to help!

[Katarina-Borovska]

Thank you for taking the time to help me with all of my questions Kate. It is refreshing to know that experienced SEO marketers like yourself are happy to help others build their knowledge.

I hope you have a good weekend!

[katemorris]

Yeah, that is actually what hreflang was intended to be. Just to differentiate content pages that had the same content just translated, even if in just dialect. Alas it is also used to show geo-targeting, but I try to not be mad about it

Change as much as needed to make the target market user comfortable. There is no hard and fast rule.

[Katarina-Borovska]

Thanks again Kate. This makes sense to me now and it seems to be a nice, easy method. I just have one final question when it comes to differentiating content between UK and US pages.

If we have a page that is relatively similar in terms of content, but the language has been amended to match the local dialect, will this remove the duplication issue if hreflang is in place?

Say, for example, there are 5 key features about a product on a page, and 3 of them are suited to both the US and UK markets. Is it enough to add localised spellings to each description, or would the entire paragraph have to be re-written from scratch to create 2 unique copies?

I see that some competitors re-write their content entirely which makes sense if they're appealing to differing local user intent but some only alter the spellings and their price points where needed. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks
Katarina

[katemorris]

If the page is https://www.example.com/us/product/ then the hreflang on that page should be:

If it is on https://www.example.com/product/ then it is actually the same

The other two lines are not needed. x-default is for your homepage when there is no target and you are asking users to set their target. If you visit https://www.ikea.com/ in an incognito window, you'll see what I mean.

And general en is not needed here. You are using hreflang for helping the SEs understand the difference in the content across countries that use the same language. As much as I hate it for that purpose, they do use this as a signal. General "en" is if you had a business that didn't geo-target and rather just had translations. One page in English, one in Spanish, etc. But no localization.

[Katarina-Borovska]

Hi Kate!

Thanks for your response, I really appreciate the help.  What you say makes a lot of sense. The reason we are opting for US and UK sites is that we offer different package and pricing information to each market so it was important to have a distinction between the two.

One thing that is very new to me, however, is the use of hreflang. Here is a sample of what we currently have on our UK and US pages:

I wasn't sure whether we needed to only include the emboldened line of code on US pages. Are the other 3 lines necessary? The same layout appears on our UK pages also.

Thanks in advance!

[katemorris]

Hi Katarina!

Your theories are right but let me explain a little more.

• US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version.
  If you are going to create a US and UK version of your page, there needs to be a reason why. If there is no reason why other than "someone told us we should," then only do one page. If there is a reason like differing product information then the pages need to be distinct from each other.

• Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions
  This is blended with what you said above. If you use a canonical and hreflang, the engines will get confused. You are telling them with the canonical that they are the same page. Then the hreflang tells them that the pages are different because of localization. You can't have both. Remove the canonical and make sure the hreflang is right.

• Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages.
  Yes!