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Hi,

I am trying to better understand where we are with SEO before we try to engage a professional firm to work with us.

I have been using Moz to try to ascertain where we are and where we can go, but am running into difficulties because I have several 'mirror' domains. In particular:  mydomain.com.sg and mydomain.com

They rank differently for different keywords in both local search and 'non-local' search.  I dont want to remove either domain because some are ranking #1 for different keywords on different domains. Thanks to Dr.Pete's suggestion about using the rel-alternative, we have seen a bump in local search rankings so I don't think we are getting penalized for the 'duplicate' content as we have targeted the .edu.sg comain as the rel-alternative for en-sg and the .com domain for everything else.

I would love to have a single report showing rankings for keywords accross both the .com and the .com.sg   - Right now, I would need to run separate campaigns for both and then manually mix/match the results to see where we rank. For some keywords, looking at the .edu.sg for keyword X gives misleading results since the .com is actually ranking well (#1) and the .com.sg is 50+   Likewise for keyword Y where the .edu.sg ranks better than the .com      Ideally the report for .com.sg and/or .com would show the best ranking for either in keyword X and Y.

Is such a thing possible in Moz? Does anyone else have any suggestions about how to manage multiple mirrored domains that are intended to be mirrors of one-another but still are in use (and not 301'd) ?

Hi Dr. Peter,

Just thought I would share the initial results of your suggestion because they appear to be so dramatic!

I put it a rel=alternate tag on every page indicating the .edu.sg version of the URL for "en-sg" and the com version of the url for "en".

From MozAnalytics: Before
Rank 1-3: 4 keywords
Rank 4-10: 21 keywords
Rank 11-20: 3 keywords
Rank 21-50: 2 keywords
Rank 51+: 216 keywords

From MozAnalytics: After
Rank 1-3: 50 keywords!!!
Rank 4-10: 19 keywords
Rank 11-20: 3 keywords
Rank 21-50: 13 keywords
Rank 51+: 167 keywords

That's pretty crazy in under a week - Not sure if its 'real' since I never personally went to check rankings on these keywords, but wow! If the MozAnalytics information is correct I am blown away!   Unfortunately its for a niche site in a tiny market so its not going to lead to fame and riches, but its still an amazing result!

Thanks so much for the great advice

Alex

Fantastic response Dr. Peter! Thanks for taking the time to explain and to suggest the rel="alternate" tag which I have now implemented in a little experiment.

I very much enjoy your posts on the moz blog and thank you for all the indirect help they have given us in the past.

Best regards,

Alex

Hi all & happy new near!

I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice:

I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...)  So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content.  I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern:

Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp.

I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
-The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
-The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations

Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa?

I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot!

Best regards from Singapore!