Hreflang on non 1:1 websites

[Matthew_Edgar]

Hi. I have a client with international websites targeting several different countries. Currently, the US (.com) website outranks the country-specific domain when conducting a search within that country (i.e. US outranks the UK website in the UK). This sounds like a classic case for hrelang. However, the websites are largely not 1:1. They offer different content with a different design and a different URL structure. Each country is on a country-specific domain (.com, .co.uk, .com.au, etc.). As well, the country-specific domains have lower domain authority than the US/.com website - fewer links, lower quality content, poorer UX, etc.

Would hreflang still help in this scenario if we were to map it the closest possible matching page? Do the websites not sharing content 1:1 add any risks? The client is worried the US/.com website will lose ranking in the country but the country-specific domain won't gain that ranking.

Thanks for any help or examples you can offer!

[NakulGoyal]

Sounds like it's the same company, right? If yes, you could do Homepage to Homepage only. That should atleast solve the issue for the right Homepage ranking, for your brand name searches in the respective countries.

[Matthew_Edgar]

Thanks for the reply! Yep, it is the same company (though each country's website is managed by a different group). Good idea on just doing the home page for the brand terms. Could maybe extend that logic for top-level pages too - target similar topics even if the content is a bit different per site.