Canonical: Same content but different countries

[newbyguy]

I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries.  The url format is:

MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country>

Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well.  The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific>

How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?

[MrWhippy]

Hi, newbguy,

It appears that your concern is about losing the different language versions of the same page? I assume that the content is the same apart from language or location. If this is the case here are some links that should help.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/

https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

If after having a look through these you are still stuck, let me know.

If you do need further help can you please tell me

1. Is the content the same on each page?
2. Is the content in the same language on each page?

Please keep in mind that the URLs in your example are technically different as they <country name="">is different in each one.</country>

I hope this helps,

Steve

[effectdigital]

Basically the canonical tags should self reference, so long as they are also supported by hreflangs.

So for example if you had these two URLs:

site.com/en/category/product

site.com/fr/category/product

... then on site.com/en/category/product you'd need:

**... and on site.com/fr/category/product you'd need:**

It's pretty simple really! Remember, only canonical URLs (usually not parameter-based child URLs) should self-reference with a canonical tag. Remember that Hreflangs need to be mutually agreed between pages for them to work (so if the FR page links to the EN page with a hreflang, but there's no hreflang coming back - it fails!) - Keep hreflangs simple and exactly symmetrical

[newbyguy]

Thank you, so if I had approximately 30 different countries, then I would reference all 30 different country URLs?

[effectdigital]

Yep every page should reference every language, including its own language. but obviously with different URLs in the link fields, as different pages should have different regional equivalents (hope that makes sense)

[newbyguy]

This post is deleted!

[effectdigital]

In response to your second question, it's fine to have /usa/ although /us/ or /en/ would be a more typical deployment (lots of people go like, /en-us/ and /en-gb/ as that structure allows for really granular international deployment!)

As long as the hreflangs are accurate and tell Google what language and region the URLs are for, as long as the hreflangs are deployed symmetrically with no conflicts or missing parts - it should be ok

Note that Google will expect to see different content on different regional URLs, sometimes even if they're the same language but targeted at different countries (tailor your content to your audience, don't just cut and paste sites and change tags and expect extra footprint). Stuff like shipping info and prices (currency shown) should also be different (otherwise don't even bother!)

Your hreflangs, if you are doing USA as your EN country, should not use 'en-gb' in the hreflang (instead they should use 'en-us')

If you're thing God the HTML implementation will make the code bloated and messy, read this:

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

There are also HTTP header and XML sitemap deployment options (though IMO, HTML is always best and is the hardest, strongest signal)