Subfolders and 301's

[Eteach_Marketing]

Hello all,

Quite simply, I'm stuck. Well, I think I am.

We are about to launch a whole new International side of our website. We're an education job board www.eteach.com for schools in the UK and a little internationally. Now that the business is growing we want to make our brand more global. All the big bosses wanted to create a brand new website called www.eteachinternational.com. I managed to persuade them to not to do that and instead use a subfolder approach off of our well established and strong domain www.eteach.com (phew).

However, now I'm getting a little lost in making sure I don't duplicate my content. We have a staffroom section on our website which basically has lots of relevant content for people searching how to become a teacher, e.g. www.eteach.com/how-to-become-a-teacher.

We also want this same content on the international subfolder, as it will still be relevant content for international teachers. However... Do I have to completely re-write the content (which I'm trying to avoid as it will be very similar) or can I put in a rel=canonical to the already existing pages?

So basically (I know this HTML isn't right, it's just for visual's sake!): www.eteach.com/international/how-to-become-a-teacher rel=canonical --> www.eteach.com/how-to-become-a-teacher

I understand this gives all the authority to the original page, not the international one, but I'm fine with that (unless anyone can suggest anything else?)

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Virginia,

You would be fine if there is a canonical in place. it exists for just this sort of occurrence. You also have the canonical example correct

This will also be much more preferable than writing very similar content.

-Andy

[GPainter]

Hi the canonical is great but to reinforce it it's also a good idea to have a link on the page pointing towards the original and it gives Google that shove that its the correct one.

Good luck with the launch!