Local subdomains for English speaking countries

[Kung_fu_Panda]

This post is deleted!

[AlanMosley]

Your sites sound like the are simular and may be seen as duplicates.

using tlds  .com.au .co.uk and so, will solve this problem. You can have a duplicate site if in different tlds.

As for splitting efforts, normally I would agree, but not when trying to rank in different countries. I believe it is easier to rank 4 sites in 4 different countries than trying to rank world wide with one.

[vmialik]

Here are similar discussions on moz.com/q that should help:

http://moz.com/community/q/what-is-best-for-seo-multiple-domains-sub-domains-or-everything-on-one-domain

http://moz.com/community/q/multi-country-targeting-for-listing-site-cctld-sub-domain-or-com-folder

http://moz.com/community/q/multiple-country-site-versions-and-hosting

[Milian]

Alan if you are using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" correctly then there shouldn't be any problems with duplicate content for different locales using sub domains or folders.

As per Google's guildelines:

Some example scenarios where rel="alternate" hreflang="x" is recommended:

• You translate only the template of your page, such as the navigation and footer, and keep the main content in a single language. This is common on pages that feature user-generated content, like a forum post.
• Your pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but the content has small regional variations. For example, you might have English-language content targeted at readers in the US, GB, and Ireland