Question about Multi-national Websites

[HiddenPeak]

I am about to work on a multi-national site and need some more information about what I should consider regarding:

• content
• keyword research
• anything else

My biggest question is regarding content. The company would like a UK version of the site with a different URL, but plan to keep the content essentially the same, with the exception of a few minor details. In this case, would duplicate content still be an issue? If so, any suggestions for working around this?

Any strategy information on multi-national sites would be really helpful.

Thank you!

Erin

[TommyTan]

Hi Erin,

I believe that if you have a .uk ccTLD and do some minor changes to the content such as price and spelling to target your UK audience, I believe search engines will see that the .uk website targets the people in UK and the duplicate content issue can be avoided.

The following links will be very helpful!

international-seo-dropping-the-information-dust international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

[HiddenPeak]

Excellent! Thank you for this information!

[john4math]

It's best if you can localize the content as much as possible, and also put the rel alternate hreflang tags on your pages.  This way Google will know which pages are alternates of others, and return the right ccTLD pages in their search results.  Read more about that here.

Also, set your Google Webmaster Tools geotargeting (see here), and let Bing know what's up (see here).

[HiddenPeak]

Thanks John!

Would you also agree that it's best to go the ccTLD approach rather than using a subdomain (.com/en , etc.)?

If we go the subdomain route, is it still possible to apply the same geotargeting guides for the search engines?

[HiddenPeak]

Thanks John!

Would you also agree that it's best to go the ccTLD approach rather than using a subdomain (.com/en , etc.)?

If we go the subdomain route, is it still possible to apply the same geotargeting guides for the search engines?

[john4math]

I think the ccTLD approach is better if you're going to build links to the new ccTLD domain.  It splits your domain authority between the two sites, but for many industries, UK people have a pretty good bias towards their own ccTLD.  The largest bias I've seen though is paying in British pounds vs. dollars.  In our experience, they really hate paying in dollars!

If you go the subdomain approach, you can do all the same geotargeting stuff.  You can even do it for subdirectories (e.g. domain.com/en/ & domain.com/es/).