AU and US site needs Hreflang?

[brandonegroup]

Hi guys,

Just want to confirm if we need some SEO actions on two of our sites.

Example:
https://www.example.com.au/collections/dresses
https://exampleamerica.com/collections/dresses

Will the domain naming will fix the issue of possible duplication?
Do we still need to implement hreflang markups?

[seoelevated]

You will want to use hreflang, either in the pages or in the sitemaps of the two sites. I'm assuming that you want the pages from the first site to rank for searches in Australia, and the second site's pages to rank in US. And hreflang tags are how you will communicate that desire to the search engines.

The AU site should have a self-referencing hreflang tag for "en-AU" and another hreflang tag for "en-US" pointing to the equivalent page on the sister site. You may also want to include an x-default tag as well.

The US site should have a self-referencing hreflang tag for "en-US" and another hreflang tag for "en-AU" pointing to the equivalent page on the sister site. You may also want to include an x-default tag as well.

And, you also probably want to geographically target the two sites (or at least one of them) in Search Console settings.

Lastly, in case a visitor lands on the wrong site (the search engines don't always obey our directives), you will want some way to inform the visitor that there is a "more appropriate" site. This can be a modal dialog based on geo-ip, or it can be just part of the site design, or however makes sense for your business.