Duplicated content multi language / regional websites

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Hi Guys,

I know this question has been asked a lot, but I wanted to double check this since I just read a comment of Gianluca Fiorelli (https://moz.com/community/q/can-we-publish-duplicate-content-on-multi-regional-website-blogs) about this topic which made me doubt my research.

The case:

A Dutch website (.nl) wants a .be version because of conversion reasons. They want to duplicate the Dutch website since they speak Dutch in large parts of both countries.

They are willing to implement the following changes:

• -       Href lang tags
• -       Possible a Local Phone number
• -       Possible a Local translation of the menu
• -       Language meta tag (for Bing)

Optional they are willing to take the following steps:

• -       Crosslinking every page though a language flag or similar navigation in the header.
• -       Invest in gaining local .be backlinks
• -       Change the server location for both websites so the match there country (Isn't neccessery in my opinion since the ccTLD should make this irrelevant).

The content on the website will at least be 95% duplicated. They would like to score with there .be in Belgium and with there .nl in The Netherlands. Are these steps enough to make sure .be gets shown for the quarry’s from Belgium and the .nl for the search quarry’s from the Netherlands?

Or would this cause a duplicated content issue resulting in filtering out version? If that’s the case we should use the canonical tag and we can’t rank the .be version of the website.

Note: this company is looking for a quick conversion rate win. They won’t invest in rewriting every page and/or blog. The less effort they have to put in this the better (I know it's cursing when talking about SEO). Gaining local backlinks would bring a lot of costs with it for example.

I would love to hear from you guys.

Best regards,

Bob van Biezen

[JordanLowry]

Google has stated duplicate content for international sites is generally not an issue as long as the content is for different users in different countries. With the steps you have previously outlined I believe you should be fine.

Hope this helps some.

[DirkC]

I agree with Jordan on this - shouldn't cause troubles.

Just make sure that you at least adapt the wording on the site  - we might both speak dutch but not all the words have the same meaning & we don't use the same words to describe the same things. As an example - in Belgium we like "konfituur" - you prefer "jam" - pretty useless to try put a page optimised for "jam" in Belgium as nobody will look for it.

Dirk

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Thanks for both of your opinions! Since this client is looking for the quickest fix possible, what is your opinion on the optional points:

• Crosslinking every page though a language flag or similar navigation in the header.
• Invest in gaining local .be backlinks

Do you think they are neccessary or add enough extra value to justify the extra costs (especialy for the extra backlinks)?

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Thanks for your comment Dirk!

Rewriting the content would be the best case scenario. Do you think it's a absolute must to rewrite those words (let's say, because Google would els filter out the .be domain if it's a exact copy) or would it be an extra to make the website convert even better and add a extra trust signal to Google?

It would probably be a pain in the ass for this webshop to check all there product descriptions for any possible words to change. They would probably not launch the .be website if it would take them a week or two to go through all the pages.

[DirkC]

Bob,

It depends on the category & type of product. I remember a Dutch site selling shutters who just put the NL content on a BE domain - problem was that in Belgium we don't use this word when looking for this type of product and hence Google wasn't showing the site (they did rank pos. 1 for shutters in Belgium but probably with 0 traffic)

You don't have to rewrite the content for Google - but it would probably be a good idea to let a Flemish person check the content. If it's just a small word here and there it's no problem - if it's about your main keywords then it's an issue

To reply to your other question - when searching in BE I quite often get NL results if Google doesn't find a good BE result or the NL site is just better. You could just put the content on the be domain - and see if it brings results (even without doing the cross-linking - although I think that would be a useful feature). Belgian backlinks will always help - but it will take time & effort. Take a trial & error approach - there is no risk - if it doesn't work you can always improve later on.

Dirk

[Bob_van_Biezen]

Thanks, valuable advice! I will put it to good use.