Country specific domains pointing to a .com site

[jimmer]

Hello,

I am new to seo so please be easy if this happens to be a "silly" question. My company has a .com site. We are expanding into global markets, focusing on specific countries right now.

General question: Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site?

Thanks,

Jim

[RyanKent]

Hi Jim.

Duplicate content refers to the content itself being made available on multiple URLs. You can duplicate content internally or externally.

Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site?

No. Let's assume you own www.mysite.com and also own www.mysite.fr. If you use a 301 redirect to point the french URL to your main site, there would be no penalty as all the content is still only on one site.

Another note is translated content is not considered as duplicate content.

A final note is country-specific sites can duplicate your .com site without it being considered duplicate content. If you have a .fr site it could be an exact duplicate of your .com site but the .fr site, assuming it was properly set up, would rank well in Google.fr whereas the .com site would rank well in Google.com or whichever country was the focus of the .com site.

[jimmer]

Thanks Ryan!

[jimmer]

Ryan,

One quick question. You mentioned, "assuming it was properly set up". Can you point me down a road where I can glean some info re: proper setup?

Thanks,
Jim

[RyanKent]

The idea is search engines need to clearly understand which country your content is targeting. Using a ccTLD such as .fr is a very strong indicator of your target country. Some other indicators:

• use the meta language tag in the header of your pages

• ensure your monetary units and measurement units are consistent with the target country

• ensure the language dialect is consistent with your target country. For example, US English is not the same as UK English.

• Other references to culture and businesses can be considered.

[jimmer]

Thanks again!

[sethmissile]

I work with a few multi-national enterprise level sites. For a site to gain good visibility in non-US countries, it is critical that the content on those sites be in the target language.

You don't need to necessarily own a country-coded Top Level Domain like a website.fr, either. Plenty of companies do great using .com/fr.  If that is the route you take, make sure you translate as much content as possible into the languages that represent the countries you are targeting.

If you create country specific sub-directories and just use your English content you will lose some control over what Google will display in search results. The canonical tag can help, but it's best to create in-language content.

Feel free to reach out to me if you need help!