What's the best SEO solution for international targeting of different english speaking countries?

[SamFanatic]

Hi guys,

recently won a client who operates globally, their domain is .com and their head office is in the UK. They have built regional sub-directories and translated content and pages of their site for /ru, /fr etc.

The issue comes with their /us and /ca pages. This content for the most part is identical to the main .com site. The content is still in English and can't in most situations be changed to be more localised, so there are duplicate content issues.

Trying to think of options:

1. Ensure hreflang is added properly, build regional links to regional pages, get local contact details / NAP on all regional pages, set up Google business listings for each regional office and link accordingly. Will Google be able to identify these regional pages as more suitable search results for US searches?

2. Make the main .com version of the content the canonical, which takes away any ranking benefits of the regional pages altogether, but removes the duplicate content issues and means we can focus link building and content resources into making sure the .com version of the page ranks well.

Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hello Sam,

Go with the OPT 1.
Also create and validate a Search Console account for each language, so there you can select the preferred language+country targetting.
Be sure to have the hreflang correctly applied.
Take a look at these articles, it might help you:
International checklist - Moz Blog
Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz Blog

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.

[SamFanatic]

Thanks for the feedback above.

Will options 1 be enough to overcome otherwise identical content, meta data etc?

[GastonRiera]

Yeap, Google stats that its enough:
Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console