Product Descriptions for Localized eCommerce Store

[pgicom]

Hi,

We currently have an eCommerce store that only sells in one country. We are going to open separate stores that will target different countries.

As far as product descriptions go my initial plan was to use the same descriptions but then block product pages from being indexed. However this has also ended up blocking us from being able to use Google's product listing ads (it rejects the data feed due to not being able to index the products).

Is there a way to copy the descriptions and avoid a delicate content issues without blocking our product pages from being indexed?

Thanks for your help!

[MichaelC-15022]

I presume the other countries are using the same language--if that's the case, then the next question is: is anything on the page going to be different for countries #2, #3, etc.?

If the answer is "no", then you can use rel=canonical on the pages for countries #2, #3, etc. pointing back at the version at your site for country #1.

If the answer is "yes" (e.g. the price is different, or the currency is different, or shipping price shown is different, etc.), then set the rel=canonical to point to the URL for the current country's page.

In both cases, you'll want to use rel="alternate" hreflang= tags for ALL of the countries....on ALL of the pages.  The idea here is that you're telling Google, on every page, what the other countries' versions of the pages are.  Included in that is the page for the country you're looking at now.  So, let's say you had www.bananas.com and also a version of the site in the United Arab Emirates, www.bananas.com.ae.  You've got pages www.bananas.com/peel.php and www.bananas.com.ae/peel.php.  BOTH of these pages would have:

For more info on this, check out Maile Ohye's video here.