Dublicate Content: Almost samt site on different domains

[KasperGJ]

Hi,

I own a couple of casting websites, which I'm at the moment launching "local" copies of all over the world.

When I launch my website in a new country, the content is basically allways the same, except the language sometimes changes country for country.

The domains will vary, so the sitename would be site.es for Spain, site.sg for Singapore, site.dk for Denmark and so.

The websites will also feature diffent jobs (castings) and diffent profiles on the search.pages and so, BUT the more static pages are the same content (About us, The concept, Faq, Create user and so).

So my Questions are:

• Is this something that is bad for Google SEO?
• The sites are atm NOT linking to each other with language-flags or anything - Should I do this? Basically to tell google that
  the business behind all these sites are somewhat big.
• Is there a way to inform Google on, that these sites should NOT be treated as dublicate content (Canonical tag wont do, since I want the "same" content to be listet on the locally Google sites).

Hope there is some experts here which can help.

/Kasper

[GlobeRunner]

Google has made it clear, time and time again, that if a web page is in a different language (it's translated), then it's not considered to be duplicate content. So, we recommend translating it into the appropriate language, it will (should) do just fine in Google and won't have an duplicate content issues.

If, however, there's more than one site that has the same content in the same language, like using English in more than one country (having two English sites but targeting different countries), then your content will need to be unique. If it's not unique, then we recommend using the canonical tag to specify which one Google should use. Using the canonical tag should be a last resort, though, as unique content is going to be best.

[katemorris]

It sounds like you have a few options. Since you need to geo-target since the content is different and NEEDS to be different in each country, except for the standard About Us, etc, you are on the right track. Using ccTLDs automatically tells Google and Bing that you are geo-targeting. All good there.

You should not need hreflang. Each site's main content is different. It's not just translated. You're fine not marking that up.

For the general content, I would recommend a canonical to the original content. That content won't be useful in the SERPs much for you, mostly branded content, so you shouldn't worry about them appearing for each country. You could just have each page on each ccTLD, but they won't perform well. Again, these are not real important pages, so don't fret too much.

[KasperGJ]

Thanks a lot. I wont change anything then.