International URL Puzzle
-
Hello,
I have 4 different URL's going to 4 different countries that all contain the same content and Google is seeing them as duplicate pages. For ecommerce reasons I have to have these 4 pages separated. Here is a example of the pages below so you can see the URL structure:
www.example/com/canada
How do I fix this duplicate content problem?
Thanks!
-
It definitely sounds like you should consider using HREFLANG as Matt already suggested. This can done via a sitemap and there is a nice tool from The Media Flow to help you with it:
http://www.themediaflow.com/resources/tools/href-lang-tool/
Based on your example above (using sub-folders for different countries) you should also consider the following if you are not doing it already:
-
Setting Geo-Location correctly in Google Web Master Tools for each country specific sub-folder.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.il/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html -
Try and make your content unique and relevant for the different locations and those users. I understand you may have the same products available for these different markets, but if possible make sure country related elements are unique £ / $ etc. Shipping information might be different for example.
Wherever possible try and make it unique whilst trying to deliver the best experience for users from that country.
Good luck!
-
-
You need to use the HREFLANG markup.
If you Google my site on Google.com, it displays and takes you to highonseo.com, if you search Google.com.au, it takes you to HighonSEO.com.au Make sense?
Add these tags to your pages in the head area. This should take about a week to "kick in" and far less time if you update regularly and Google comes and crawls you sooner.
<link rel="alternate" <span class="il">hreflang="en-Us" href="http://www.example.com/US" /></link rel="alternate" <span>
<link rel="alternate" <span class="il">hreflang</link rel="alternate" <span>="en-UK" href="http://www.example.com/UK" />
<link rel="alternate" <span class="il">hreflang</link rel="alternate" <span>="en-AU" href="http://www.example.com/australia" />
<link rel="alternate" <span class="il">hreflang</link rel="alternate" <span>="en-CA" href="http://www.example.com/canada" />
More on HREFLANG:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
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
-
Faceted Navigation URLs Best Practices
Hi, We are developing new Products Pages with faceted filters. You can see it here: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ We have a feature allowing to Order By and Group By, which alters the order of all products. There will also be the option to view Products as a table, which will contain same products but with different design and maybe slightly different content of each product. All this will happen without changing the URL, https://www.viatrading.com/all/ Is this the best practice? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Nofollow "print" URLs?
Hi there, Apols for the basic question but is it considered good practice to nofollow one of one's own URLs? Basically our 'print page' command produces an identical URL in the same window but with .../?print=1 at the end. As far as I've been reading, the nofollow html attribute is, broadly speaking, only for links to external websites you don't want to vouch for or internal links to login/register pages that together with noindex, you're asking Google not to waste crawl budget on. (The print page is already noindexed so we're good there) Can anyone confirm the above from their own experience? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daft.ie0 -
Which URL is better for SEO?
We have a URL structure question: Because we have websites in multiple countries and in multiple languages, we need to add additional elements to our URL structure. Of the two following options, what would be better for SEO? Option 1: www.abccompany.com/abc-ca-en/home.htm Option 2: www.abccompany.com/home.abc.ca.en.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | northwoods-2603420 -
Change relative to absolute urls?
Is it worth the time to go through a site that was built in Dreamweaver and change the relative urls to absolute urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kimmiedawn0 -
Should we use URL parameters or plain URL's=
Hi, Me and the development team are having a heated discussion about one of the more important thing in life, i.e. URL structures on our site. Let's say we are creating a AirBNB clone, and we want to be found when people search for apartments new york. As we have both have houses and apartments in all cities in the U.S it would make sense for our url to at least include these, so clone.com/Appartments/New-York but the user are also able to filter on price and size. This isn't really relevant for google, and we all agree on clone.com/Apartments/New-York should be canonical for all apartment/New York searches. But how should the url look like for people having a price for max 300$ and 100 sqft? clone.com/Apartments/New-York?price=30&size=100 or (We are using Node.js so no problem) clone.com/Apartments/New-York/Price/30/Size/100 The developers hate url parameters with a vengeance, and think the last version is the preferable one and most user readable, and says that as long we use canonical on everything to clone.com/Apartments/New-York it won't matter for god old google. I think the url parameters are the way to go for two reasons. One is that google might by themselves figure out that the price parameter doesn't matter (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en) and also it is possible in webmaster tools to actually tell google that you shouldn't worry about a parameter. We have agreed to disagree on this point, and let the wisdom of Moz decide what we ought to do. What do you all think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peekabo0 -
Numbers (2432423) in URL
Hello All Mozers, Quick question on URL. I know URL is important and should include keywords and all that but my question is does including numbers (not date or page numbers but numbers for internal use) in the URL affect SEO? For example, www.domain.com/screw-driver,12,1,23345.htm Is that any better or worse than www.domain.com/screw-driver.htm? I understand that this is not user friendly but in SEO stand point does it hurt ranking? What's your opinion on this? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TommyTan0 -
How to fix issues regarding URL parameters?
Today, I was reading help article for URL parameters by Google. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1235687 I come to know that, Google is giving value to URLs which ave parameters that change or determine the content of a page. There are too many pages in my website with similar value for Name, Price and Number of product. But, I have restricted all pages by Robots.txt with following syntax. URLs:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=name
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?dir=asc&order=price
http://www.vistastores.com/table-lamps?limit=100 Syntax in Robots.txt
Disallow: /?dir=
Disallow: /?p=
Disallow: /*?limit= Now, I am confuse. Which is best solution to get maximum benefits in SEO?0 -
In Report Card - Weird Characters in URL
We have an underscore in a lot of our links. My question is since it is difficult to change existing site architecture, is an underscore really that negative? Here is an example: http://www.winematch.com/profile_368-2005-Artesa-Vineyards--Winery-Merlot-Reserve.html Eventually we want to change this to http://www.winematch.com/wine/2005-Artesa-Vineyards-Winery-Merlot-Reserve.html but it is a big project.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundbrix0