Using hreflang on multiple domains when one has been penalized
-
Hi,
I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site.
Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new).
I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:-
The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order.
However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues).
So the question is, what should I do? Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?
-
I have conformation directly from Google's John Mueller that this is not a problem and the penalty will NOT pass between domains with hreflang.
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
-
Two websites or a sub domain or sub page?
Hi, Our company has three branches in Canada and opening a 4th in the United States soon. Our target market strategy will differ in the States and I would like to know your opinion if we should launch a second site under a slightly different brand or not. I don’t want to do anything that could negatively impact our site’s current organic ranks. I feel I have to give some history on our company so you understand the dilemma. It is a little complicated. So, in Canada, we rent large generators and all the equipment needed to distribute and transform that power. We don’t own the generators. We re-rent generators (broker) from our partners. What we own is all the distribution equipment that typically accompanies a generator rental. We make money on the generator also, but the real money is in the distribution portion. In terms of messaging, our current site is tuned to target the end-user, the same market that our re-rent partners target. As a result, our re-rent partners and our company will bid on the same project in many occurrences. Our strategy in the United States is to primarily target the re-rent market. That is a very small segment in comparison to the end-user. From a marketing perspective, all that is really needed to target that group is an outside sales team. There are maybe 40 re-rent partners we will target in our first U.S. GEO… Texas. In the States, we will not rent generators. We will not run ad campaigns that bid on any generator rental type terms. We will not offer the same level of turn-key solutions we offer in Canada. All of the equipment we manufacture will be very generic in appearance, think Acme. Branding will look completely different than what we have up in Canada. We want the re-rent companies we target in the States to feel comfortable we are there to support them not compete against them. Regarding website strategy, I see three options: 1. We create a sub domain or sub page of www.trinitypower.com that explains the services we offer in the States. This for me is the safest solution. 2. We launch a second domain www.trinitypowerrentals.com that has similar content in-terms of the type of equipment we rent, but speaks directly to re-rent partners. That may not be enough of a differentiator though and I fear two sites owned by the same company with similar content will have negative SEO implications, if not right away, a year down the road. 3. We launch a new website under a completely different company name. This still carries some risk as I understand it, even if we have different phone numbers, company registration info, etc…
Local SEO | | TrinityPower
Would love to know your thoughts. Thanks everyone. J0 -
Advice on Setting Up Multiple Locations
Hello - one of my client's is expanding their business and opening new locations across the country. I have been planning to setup up the structure as: www.clientsite.com, www.clientsite.com/location1, www.clientsite.com/location2, www.clientsite.com/location3 and so on . Is there any downside for our SEO by making each of these location1, location2... sites their own individual Wordpress install? The overall look of each location will be the same (and they will be using the same custom Wordpress theme), but there services at each location will be different (or have different names). I'd estimate there will be very few duplicate pages from the "main" site to each location site. Thanks!
Local SEO | | SundialStudios0 -
How to Best Optimize for Multiple Cities and Services Areas?
A business with offices in 3 major cities and loads of service areas hired us to build its website. Here's my internal debate regarding local SEO: Do I build one site with a thorough sitemap that utilizes one page per city and/or region for local SEO? Do I build a primary site with a limited sitemap and a subsite for each city (e.g. companyname.com/city) that essentially replicates the sitemap from the primary site? If I go this route, the content on each page of each subsite would be unique (not copied and localized versions of the content on the primary site), but what about the keywords? For example, should each subsite use the same keywords as the primary site (e.g. companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/keyword-or-phrase OR companyname.com/keyword-or-phrase and companyname.com/city-name/variation-of-keyword-or-phrase). In the end, I suppose the question is, "Should I build one site with a more thorough sitemap and single pages for each city and/or region OR should I build a site for each city with less thorough sitemaps?" Budget constraints won't allow for option C, which is build a site for each city with a thorough sitemap for each. Thank you guys in advance for whatever insight you're willing to give!
Local SEO | | cbizzle0 -
Lots of [keyword]in[city].com domains - what to do?
A client of mine had purchased a lot of domains. They all start with the same keyword following by "in" following by a cities name. The cities are all the cities around their location. They had the pages set up to all look the same with very small differences in content. A bunch of duplicate content. All of them have a DA of 8 and PA of 19. There are 35 of them total. They get roughly 30-60 hits a month each but it's mostly all spam. The idea was for users to type in [keyword] in [city] in Google and these websites show up. A competitor of my clients had done something similar which was working for them. The main website (separate of these) gets ~1500 visits per month of non spam traffic and gets ~10 referrals from these websites. What should be done with these domains? Chalk it off as a bad idea and have them 301 to the main website until they expire? Or can they be changed into something useful? If so, how? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Note: I did search for this similar topic but it was hard to search it out and I did not find an answer. Thanks!
Local SEO | | RedKeyDesigns0 -
What is The Best Way to Rank in Multiple Countries?
Hi, I have a client that would like to rank in google.ie as well as .co.uk and in the middle east and possibly other parts of Europe. What is the best way to go about this? Would a new domain for each country be best and hosted in that specific country or is there a way to do this with one site? Bearing in mind that SEO will need to be done to rank in each country. Many Thanks.
Local SEO | | WSIDW0 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0 -
Best domain to promote a french hotel in english
Hello, I have to promote a french hotel for english target and I have to choose a domain. I only have 2 domains available: Exact Match Domain with .fr extension i.e. hotelsinavignone.fr Partial Match Domain with .com extension i.e. myhotelsinavignone.com Which one has more possibilities to rank better on google.com for the keyword "hotels in avignone" ? Thank you very much, DoMiSol Rossini
Local SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Removing Sub Domain & Improving Page Performance
Hello Moz folks, This question is about my main website: www.web3.ca
Local SEO | | Web3Marketing87
(run on joomla) I just noticed a very strange occurrence - when I add ANY subdomain to the home page, it still resolves to the home page. example: test3.web3.ca Can this be bad for SEO, and is there a way to eliminate this? Second Question: Do you think there are two many outgoing links on the home page of Web3? Could reducing the number of links improve the home page's performance & rank? Thanks
Anton0