US and UK Websites of Same Business with Same Content
-
Hello Community,
I need your help to understand, whether I can use the US website's content on my UK website or not?
US Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.com
UK Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.co.uk
Both websites are having same content on all the pages, including testimonials/reviews.
I am trying to gain business from Adwords and Organic SEO marketing.
Thanks.
-
Yup, but doesn't matter. Hreflang works for this situation whether cross-domain or on a subdirectory/subdomain basis (and in fact is even more effective when cross-domain as you're also getting the benefit of the geo-located ccTLD.)
P.
-
Hi Paul,
If I understood correctly, we are talking about two different websites, not a website with subdomains.
Hreflang can be used for other languages and countries although not for masking 100% duplicated content as I stated above.site A: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.com
site B: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.co.uk
The recommendations that Google gives are for the purpose of having the pages crawled and indexed not for having success with 100% duplicate content which do not serve a good UX, therefore gain a high bounce rate, then the overall SEO fall down.
Mª Verónica
-
Unfortunately, your information is incorrect, Veronica.
Hreflang is specifically designed for exactly this situation. As Google Engineer Maile Oye clearly states, one of the primary uses of hreflang markup is:
- Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
(https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en)
There's no question differentiating similar content in the same language for different regions/countries is more of a challenge than for totally different languages, but it can absolutely be done, and in fact is a very common requirement for tens of thousands of companies.
Paul
- Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
-
Hi CommercePundit,
Sadly, there is not "a non painful way to say it".
You cannot gain business from Adwords and Organic SEO marketing having 100% duplicated content.The options; canonical and hreflang would not work in this case.
The only option is language "localization", mean rewrite the whole content by a local writer.
Canonical can be used for up to 10% not for the whole 100%. Hreflang can be used for other languages and countries although not for masking 100% duplicated content.
Sorry to tell the bad news. Good luck!
Mª Verónica
-
The more you can differentiate these two sites, the better they will each perform in their own specific markets, CP.
First requirement will be a careful, full implementation of hreflang tags for each site.
Next, you'll need to do what you can to regionalise the content - for example changing to UK spelling for the UK site content, making sure prices are referenced in pounds instead of dollars, changing up the language to use British idioms and locations as examples where possible. It'll also be critical to work towards having the reviews/testimonials from each site's own country, rather than generic, This will help dramatically from a marketing standpoint and also help differentiate for the search engines, so a double win.
And finally, you'll want to make certain you've set up each in their own Google Search Console and used the geographic targeting for the .com site to specify its target as US. (You won't' need to target the UK site as the .co.uk is already targeted so you won't' get that option in GSC.). If you have an actual physical address/phone in the UK, would also help to set up a separate Google My Busines profile for the UK branch.
Bottom line is - you'll need to put in significant work to differentiate the sites and provide as many signals as possible for which site is for which country in order to help the search engines understand which to return in search results.
Hope that all makes sense?
Paul
-
Hi!
Yeap you can target UK market with US site version. Always keep in mind that its possible that you might perform as well as in the main market (US).
Also, before making any desition and/or implementing, take a look at these articles:
Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console
International checklist - Moz Blog
Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz BlogHope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.
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
-
Internal link is creating duplicate content issues and generating 404s from website crawl.
Not sure what the best way to describe it but the site is built with Elementor page builder. We are finding out that a feature that is included with a pop modal window renders an HTML code as so: Click So when crawled I think the crawling is linking itself for some reason so the crawl returns something like this: xyz.com/builder/listing/ - what we want what we don't want xyz.com/builder/listing/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ xyz.com/builder/listing/%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9//%23elementor-action%3Aaction%3Dpopup%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6Ijc2MCIsInRvZ2dsZSI6ZmFsc2V9/ so you'll notice how that string in the HREF is appended each time and it loops a couple times. Could I 301 this issue, what's the best way to go about handling something like this? It's causing duplicate meta descriptions/content errors for some listing pages we have. I did add a rel='nofollow' to the anchor tag with JavaScript but not sure if that'll help.
Technical SEO | | JoseG-LP0 -
My content has been shared across different websites - how do I become the canonical link?
I wanted to ask about canonical links. Basically I produced some content for my website which was an interview with a famous band who were playing at a festival that summer. I told the festival and they asked to have exclusive dibs on releasing the piece in exchange for linking back to our domain. I said yes as I knew the link would be a good one. So this interview got posted up, I then posted in on my website's blog, and a month later the local newspaper also featured it on their website. Is there some way to have a creative license over this interview piece (which has been copied word for word) without getting the other websites to edit their code and add a canonical reference? I did ask them but my request was unsuccessful. I'm thinking there might be no way to claim this content as my website was not the first domain to post it? Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | gazdye830 -
Why did my website DA fell down?
Hello, Could you please let me know why might my website's DA have fallen down in merely a week? What might be a reason? I also noticed traffic from google dropped down at the very same week. Will be very thankful for any advise!
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
Not ranking - Scarped content
Hi, I have a problem with a website, that never compe up with before. The website is: https://www.enallaktikidrasi.com It has a bunch of excellent articles, good enough on-page SEO and a medium backlink profile. However, it is ranking just for very very few keywords. The major problem is that there are original articles that searched by their title won't appear in top100 results but they will appear in other websites that scapre them (even if they give a backlink to our original article!) Also, the website has good rankings in Bing and Yahoo but not in Google. There are keywords ranking in #1 in Bing but nowhere in top10 pages in Google.... I am guessing for 3 issues: 1. Majestic shows a very low trust score (just 13). However, the website has not got any kind of penalty in the last 3 years. 2. There are many scarpers. The odd is that scarpers with no real value outrank our content. (Scarpers with almost zero backlink profile) 3. We ran Sucuri on website as there were a large bots attack. Is there a correlation between it bots attack and Google results? (but why not in Bing and Yahoo too?) It seems like Google underestimates the website when indexing websites for some reason. Moreover, some of the articles are really the best around but the keywords they are targeted are not either within the 30 first pages... Any help?? Thanks..
Technical SEO | | alex33andros0 -
How do we keep Google from treating us as if we are a recipe site rather than a product website?
We sell food products that, of course, can be used in recipes. As a convenience to our customer we have made a large database of recipes available. We have far more recipes than products. My concern is that Google may start viewing us as a recipe website rather than a food product website. My initial thought was to subdomain the recipes (recipe.domain.com) but that seems silly given that you aren't really leaving our website and the layout of the website doesn't change with the subdomain. Currently our URL structure is... domain.com/products/product-name.html domain.com/recipes/recipe-name.html We do rank well for our products in general searches but I want to be sure that our recipe setup isn't detrimental.
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
New Website, New URL, New Content - What do we do with the old site? Are 301's the only option?
We've just built a new site for a client. They were adamant on changing the url. The new site is entirely new content, however the subject mater is the same. Some pages are even titled very similarly. Is is advisable to keep the old site running, and link it to the new site? Permanently, or temporarily? Do we simply place redirects from the old site the new? Old site was 30 pages, new site is 80 pages. So redirects won't be available to all the new pages. It seems a shame to trash the old site, it is getting some good traffic, and the content - although outdated is unique and of a high quality. Old url is 4+ yrs old, the new url is new. Some enlightened opinions would be greatly welcomed. Thanks
Technical SEO | | MarketsOnline0 -
Website Redirects
Background information: We have a website (devicelock.com) which is currently our corporate website. The company use to operate under (ntutility.com) which is now being redirected to devicelock.com via a DNS Forward - 302 Redirect. The IT admin (a founder of the company) is reluctant to change it to a 301. The current flow is ntutility.com redirects to protect-me.com then redirects again to devicelock.com. When i search up Devicelock on google, it shows up as ntutlity.com. There is no devicelock.com homepage on google search. Question: Are there any negative implications about this? Is this hurting our SEO in any way? When i do link building, will this have any negative affects? Will my links for devicelock be attributed to devicelock.com?
Technical SEO | | Devicelock0 -
Multi Language websites!
Hello, What is the best way for a website to have more languages? For example www.site.com is in english BUT the content will be translated in other 4 languages .es .it .fr .de . Should i buy 4 diferent domains www.site1.es www.site2.it etc... or create folders like site.com/es/ site.com/it etc OR create subdomains es.site.com Few months ago i was 100% sure..to go and buy diferent domains then to create diferent content on that languages..but now..i am not so sure. Thank you very much for your help!
Technical SEO | | willyg0