Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain

[TinoSharp]

I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites.

This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations.

• We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au
• now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk
• please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight
• as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different.

Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is -

1. Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages?

2. If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website?

3. I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

I don't fully understand what's your issue with canonicals as you made it look like the issue is related to hreflang tag.

So, answering your questions:

1. Canonical tags should point to a page that means the same INSIDE the same website. If that's not the case, its a common practice to have self-referential canonical tags.
2. Not having canonical tags at all **will not impact **your rankings nor its ability to rank higher. With this, you are telling Google that you don't know if there is a better page and let google choose for itself what's the best canonical (if any)
3. Having different domains for different countries and even with different letters/words is not an issue at all. You have an advantage having ccTLD domains for each country, this means that Google already understands that your website is targeted to that country. If between both websites, you share content and have a set of pages that mean the same but for different countries, then you should add hreflangs so G gets the idea that both sites relate.

Do these comments answer your questions?

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

[TinoSharp]

Hi Gaston,  Yes, it does answer the question. Thanks for your response. I will update here if I have any more questions.