B2B International Subdirectory - How Unique is Unique?

[SEOPPCDP]

With the power to upload unique xml sitemaps for a subdirectory targeting the UK, geo-target the UK in WebmasterTools, and the ability to adjust content to adhere to en-gb standards, would it still be essential for a site to re-write all of it's content if it wanted to rank well or could we just use the same content as our en-us pages with the dialect changes and other tools mentioned above?

Not interested in unique TLDs or subdomains.

[Mike.Goracke]

I guess it depends on the extent of changes you make when you say you would modify it for dialect changes.

Google refers to duplicate content as, "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably
similar."

So, if you are changing a handful of words/phrases and just changes the location from X to Y, that probably wouldn't be very unique. You want to keep in mind that not only do you want to create unique content for search engines, but you want your users to see unique content as well. For instance, if a visitor was on your site and they were looking at your office locations and read your US page, then your UK page and they were almost identical, that would provide for a poor user experience.

I would suggest that you rewrite them to be as unique as you can. Can you get by with just changing the dialect and location on those pages? - maybe; however from a user standpoint that would not be good form.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[SEOPPCDP]

But really, I don't want the user to have a different experience.  We are doing this solely for the purpose of getting more traction in the UK.  We've built amazing sites in the US with tons of pages and why not have UK visitors receive the same pages?  The content isn't specific to any country.  We don't mention locations.

So really we are just doing this for Google.

[Mike.Goracke]

I understand that you don't want them to have a different experience; however, you should want them to have a unique experience.

If you are just doing it for Google, I would read the link I included in my original post, which states, "...in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt
to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results." and "In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed
entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results."

Here is an example - SAP provides business software solutions globally. They have MANY versions of their website. Look at the subtle difference between content, images, etc. SAP-US and SAP-UK. They have the same type of pages on both sites, but the content and positioning is slightly different.

I understand that you are saying your visitors want the same end result whether that is a product or service from your company. You may just want to try having a landing page specific to the UK? You could design it like your homepage and then have it link to content throughout the rest of your site (the same stuff you are linking to for US based customers). You would then want to add domain.com/uk to all of the UK based business directories and such. Maybe create a Facebook page that is for that UK based domain?

Hope this helps. It is a good idea to target other areas... I am just saying that if you start duplicating your content, you could run into trouble with Google rather quickly.

Good luck.

Mike

[SEOPPCDP]

Appreciate the feedback, Mike.  I'll take a closer look at SAP.