Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?

[JonRayner]

Hi

I wonder if anyone could help me on a canonical link query/indexing issue. I have given an overview, intended solution and question below. Any advice on this query will be much appreciated.

Overview: I have a client who has a .com domain that includes blog content intended for the US market using the correct lang tags. The client also has a .co.uk site without a blog but looking at creating one. As the target keywords and content are relevant across both UK and US markets and not to duplicate work the client has asked would it be worthwhile centralising the blog or provide any other efficient blog site structure recommendations.

Suggested solution: As the domain authority (DA) on the .com/.co.uk sites are in the 60+ it would risky moving domains/subdomain at this stage and would be a waste not to utilise the DAs that have built up on both sites. I have suggested they keep both sites and share the same content between them using a content curated WP plugin and using the 'canonical link' to reference the original source (US or UK) - so not to get duplicate content issues.

My question: Let's say I'm a potential customer in the UK and i'm searching using a keyword phrase that the content that answers my query is on both the UK and US site although the US content is the original source.
Will the US or UK version blog appear in UK SERPs? My gut is the UK blog will as Google will try and serve me the most appropriate version of the content and as I'm in the UK it will be this version, even though I have identified the US source using the canonical link?

[shahryar89]

Hi,

I had been in a similar position, dealt with 10+ websites with the same issues, but now fixed. The nature of the business were the same, services the same just the markets were different like .in, co.uk, .ca, .us etc. We were skeptical initially as we had a plan to set up a blog or something on all the local sites or not, but then the question arise duplication, conflict etc.

So what I did, I went with seperate blogs for few of the top performing sites. Lets say, co.uk and .us, the services were the same and so does the keywords. Since we are using hreflang, ccTLDs, International targeting enough singals for Google to understand which page belongs to which country. We started rephrasing the master content kind of more LSI approach and published them under co.uk since that was 2nd best perfoming markets we had first one was US. In this way, we didn't consfuse Google and our users yet we were writing some quality content and rephrasing them with LSI approach to publish them on other sites.

But initially, Google was showing the US content in UK and UK content in US, but it got fixed once we had enough content on the site.

Plus moving to subdomain just to make it central no I won't suggest you to do this. What should you do, It's time consuming but long lasting, produce the content, rephrase with the LSI approach, add or less the content based on country requirement or whatever you feel like doing and then tag content / URLs with self-referential hreflang and canonical tags