Duplicate content on websites for multiple countries

[InvoqMarketing]

I have a client who has a website for their U.S. based customers. They are currently adding a Canadian dealer and would like a second website with much of the same info as their current website, but with Canadian contact info etc. What is the best way to do this without creating duplicate content that will get us penalized? If we create a website at ABCcompany.com and ABCCompany.ca or something like that, will that get us around the duplicate content penalty?

[SamuelScott]

The first thing to understand is that "duplicate content" is normally not a penalty. It's just that if two of your pages have identical information, then only one of the pages will usually appear in search results. It's not a penalty per se, it's just Google's way of not providing redundant pages in search results. (Note: You can get penalized if you aggressively plagiarize and steal other websites' content and put it on your own -- that is something different.)

In regards to your specific question:

1. Matt Cutts says in this video that what you describe is generally not a problem (because you're not being a spammer who is trying to game the system).

2. I'd review the international best SEO practices described here by Google. Google says you shouldn't worry too much about it, either. But I'd be sure to follow all of these guidelines -- geo-targeting settings for each domain in Webmaster Tools, for example -- in general to "tell" Google that you've got two different TLDs targeting two different countries.

So, having two sites with similar content at .com and.ca should be fine.

Good luck! I hope everything's clear.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

"duplicate content is normally not a penalty."

This also depends on just how much there is. If you duplicate a page, that is identical information.

You can get around this problem Jon, by using the HREFLANG markup that will also work across domains, but remember that it works on a per URL basis, so you would need to use this for each of the URL's with the duplicate content.

Have a read of this article from Google on how to use the markup.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

I hope that helps.

-Andy