International website sharing with .com/.au/.uk
-
I have a small business in the United States and would like to copy our main website for my international partners. My website is a .com. I think that their domains will end in their country codes: .au and .uk. We are open to using different domains. We plan to share blog articles and other content, but do not wish to be penalized for duplication. I have tried to read articles on this topic, but am unfamiliar with a lot of the terms. Is there any way to do this simply? Many thanks, Steph
-
Hello Steph,
I'm assuming you have read about hreflang tags. This is the correct action for your site.
On each domain that you have, you will need to have three link elements in the source code on each page.
For example, on the homepage of every domain name, you would need the following tags:
And on every other page on the site, you would need to replace the web address with the corresponding address of each language version of the page. This tells search engines the relationship between each page, and the language of each.
By using hreflang tags correctly, you will not be penalised for having duplicate content on each page.
That said, make sure that any text that should be different on each international version is indeed different. Ensure things like localised spelling, currency, and any country-specific information are specific to each country.
I hope this helps.