Multiple Countries, Same Language: Receiving Duplicate Page & Content Errors

[Allie_Williams]

Hello!

I have a site that serves three English-speaking countries, and is using subfolders for each country version:

• United Kingdom: https://site.com/uk/
• Canada: https://site.com/ca/
• United States & other English-speaking countries: https://site.com/en/

The site displayed is dependent on where the user is located, and users can also change the country version by using a drop-down flag navigation element in the navigation bar. If a user switches versions using the flag, the first URL of the new language version includes a language parameter in the URL, like:

• https://site.com/uk/blog?language=en-gb

In the Moz crawl diagnostics report, this site is getting dinged for lots of duplicate content because the crawler is finding both versions of each country's site, with and without the language parameter.

However, the site has rel="canonical" tags set up on both URL versions and none of the URLs containing the "?language=" parameter are getting indexed.

So...my questions:

1. Are the Duplicate Title and Content errors found by the Moz crawl diagnostic really an issue?

2. If they are, how can I best clean this up?

Additional notes: the site currently has no sitemaps (XML or HTML), and is not yet using the hreflang tag. I intend to create sitemaps for each country version, like:

• .com/en/sitemap.xml
• .com/ca/sitemap.xml
• .com/uk/sitemap.xml

I thought about putting a 'nofollow' tag on the flag navigation element, but since no sitemaps are in place I didn't want to accidentally cut off crawler access to alternate versions.

Thanks for your help!

[MonicaOConnor]

Oh this is a tough one. The problem is that no matter the tags and language, the content is the same. It is reflecting duplicate content because it is duplicate content. Duplicate content within your site is serious, especially if you are trying to target keywords on those pages.

The hreflang tags should help you be able to display languages without using so many duplicate pages. I don't have much experience with that tag, but my advice would be to look into it further to help with your duplicate content issue. No following the duplicate pages will ultimately effect their rankings, so that probably isn't the best thing to do.

[katemorris]

Hi!

This is a tough one because I can't tell if you mean to be geo-targeting or translate. It's not a one or the other thing, but it usually is when you are just targeting english speaking countries. Can you do me a favor and go to http://www.katemorris.com/issg/ and go through the questions there? Let me know what the "answer" is for your situation and I'll help you get to the right solution.

But in short, yes, the duplicate content is a real issue with or without the lang parameter.

Let me know!

[Allie_Williams]

Hi Kate,

Nifty quiz and flowchart! Thanks for sharing it. All the countries targeted are English-speaking, though further expansion to non-English speaking countries is planned for 2015. Here are the answers to the questions:

1. Does your business/product/content change in different countries?

A: Not really. 90% of the products are available in all three countries, and only one country is currently lacking the remaining 10%, and it will start selling those products there in 2015.

2. Would it make sense to an international visitor to see different site content? (ex. currency, localization, etc.)

A: Currency - yes. Otherwise, not really.

3. Do you have the resources to differentiate the content?

A: Not currently. This is a set of branded products, and the product descriptions use extensive "on-brand" language.

4. Are there multiple official languages for any of these countries?

A: Yes, Canada's official languages are English and French. There is no French version currently available.

5. Do you plan on offering the site content in all official languages?

A: Next six months - no. Late 2015 - maybe.

Going through the quiz, if I answer:

1. No, 2. Yes, 3. No

This is the recommendation:

Your International Strategy is:

Translate Only

1. Don’t machine translate, while manual translation is costly, it’s the best for your goals.
2. Put your HREFLANG in XML sitemaps.
3. Use the Language Meta tag for Bing translation targeting.
4. Don’t use a ccTLD. That is for Geo-Targeting only.

Aside from the manual translation portion, do you think #2 and #3 are still the best solutions for this situation?

Thanks for your help!

[katemorris]

Yep, given your resource constraints, I'd focus on translations for now. If you ever get to a point that there is something bigger than price differentiating your content, then you can think about geo-targeting. You will need the resources to differentiate the content though.

Right now, my recommendation is to drop the country specific content and just offer English for now. Your content can rank for any English speaking search, regardless of country. However, if the terms people use in the US, UK and Canada differ that much, you can "translate" the content (en-us, en-gb, en-au) and use the HREFLANG tag.

For price changes, that's tricker, but do you offer the price in search results via schema? Does it show up? If not, then you can use cookies to set the prices dependent on the country the person chooses (try not to use IP address, and if you do, make people confirm the setting).

For now, focus your time and efforts getting the flow right for the user. Only worry about HREFLANG if your English content needs to be differentiated for term usage. Then focus your efforts on getting those upcoming translations right. When that is ready, then really use HREFLANG.

Hope that helps!