Duplicate content pages on different domains, best practice?

[seosogood]

Hi,

We are running directory sites on different domains of different countries (we have the country name in the domain name of each site) and we have the same static page on each one, well, we have more of them but I would like to exemplify one static page for the sake of simplicity.

So we have http://firstcountry.com/faq.html, http://secondcountry.com/faq.html and so on for 6-7 sites, faq.html from one country and the other have 94% similarity when checked against duplicate content. We would like an alternative approach to canonical cause the content couldn´t belong to only one of this sites, it belongs to all. Second option would be unindex all but one country. It´s syndicated content but we cannot link back to the source cause there is none.

Thanks for taking the time in reading this.

[MattAntonino]

I would start by implementing hreflang tags:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

Hreflang should take care of these type of issues as Google will associate the right country domain with the content. You may see some overlap for awhile - we've seen hreflang take a bit longer than we'd like to get fully set but once it is, it usually works well.

Short of that, you have 3 options.  1) change the content on all sites to be (somewhat) unique. 2) deindex all but one as you said, 3) canonical, as you said.

1, 2 & 3 all have problems so that's why I would start with hreflang.

[Giovatto]

Hreflang tags are great. I would highly suggest implementing these. Something that I was confused about when I first started using them was that all tags should be on all domains including its own.

For example: firstcountry.com/faq.html should have tags for:

• firstcountry.com/faq.html
• secondcountry.com/faq.html
• thirdcountry.com/faq.html

and so on.

You can check that these have been implemented correctly in Google Webmaster Tools under "Search Traffic" -> "International Targeting"

[OptiBacUK]

As the other users have pointed out, the alternate and  hreflang tag would be most ideal. I am in a pickle myself with a very similar issue.

You must note that the alternate tag is to be applied on a page level so every page should resolve to the appropriate URL of it's copy on all other country domains.

So your homepage (.com) could have the following alternate tags:

But on your FAQ page, the alternates would be:

You'll have to rinse and repeat on all 3 sites and for every single page.

Tedious if you ask me! Does anyone know an easier way to go around adding alternate tags to 3 or 4 sites without doing it manually?

The advantage of implementing those however is that you are not canonicalising to one domain which means all your domains stand a chance of performing well in their regions (e.g a search on Google Australia will show the .com.au website).

Again, does anyone have a better approach to this or seen / heard of one? Apart from canonical of course.

[MattAntonino]

If your site is based on templates so you can easily put in a header code (Wordpress, Joomla, most CMS, anything but a page-by-page HTML usually) you can insert it directly in by calling in the page itself like this:

" hreflang="x-default" />
" hreflang="en-au" />
" hreflang="en-us" />
" hreflang="en-nz" />

This works on Apache servers - this starts with the domain and then request_URI pulls in the page you're on so /about, or /faq and adds the appropriate hreflang tag to that.

Also, when you're done implementing hreflang test it using Flang.

[gfiorelli1]

In order to make things easier you can implement hreflang via sitemaps.xml using this tool by Mediaflow: http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php.

[gfiorelli1]

Using canonical IS NOT the solution, because if you use canonical the FAQ pages of the canonicalized websites are going to be deindexed.

So, just do it if you really don't care about the traffic those answers can generate for your sites (as you can imagine, this is an ironic suggestion...).

Just use the hreflang, because Google in the last months has become quite smart in understanding that it means that you consider those pages relevant enough for the geo-targeted audiences to not filter them out even if they are substantially identical between country versions.

Said that, try to differentiate the FAQ pages (better localization of the language. i.e.: English UK is slightly different than American English), or even offering a local number for phone inquiries and localized email address for question via email.

In general, it is not a good idea using the crossdomain canonical in International SEO, and it should be used just in exceptional cases.