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Google has stated that duplicate content will be penalized, if it is deemed that the content is meant to manipulate search results. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359 "In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results." If two pages both have the same content, even with a canoical url Google will choose which one to index most likely the newer version of that page. "Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a "regular" and "printer" version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex meta tag, we'll choose one of them to list." I would not recommend having duplicate content on your site if it can be avoided. If it can't, set one of the pages you dont want indexed to "no-index".

Hi Christopher, The set-up you have at the moment is actually fine for SEO - http://www.fdmgroup.com/ resolves the website. http://fdmgroup.com/ employs a 301 redirect to take users and search engines to http://www.fdmgroup.com/: http://i.imgur.com/et4AKYV.png This is correct, http://fdmgroup.com/ would be seen as a separate "version" of the home page if it was allowed to load without sending everyone on to the "www" version via the 301 redirect. Furthermore, every page within the http://fdmgroup.com/ "version" of the website would be duplicated from the "www" version of each page. If you want to change to use http://fdmgroup.com/ instead, using that both on advertising and having that be the version of the website that resolves for both users and search engines, you will need to reverse that 301 redirect. This will mean that when people try to visit http://**www.**fdmgroup.com/, they are redirected to http://fdmgroup.com/. This is a simple process. However, it is inadvisable to go through redirection like this unless you really, really have to. When you redirect a URL with a 301 redirect, a large portion of the URL's authority is passed on to the new URL. Not all of the authority is passed though. As a result, your rankings and traffic can take a little hit for a short while. This is not usually a big problem, and usually resolves itself quickly but it is best avoided unless the redirection really has to take place. I am tempted to say that "it looks cleaner" is not the best reason to go through this change when your current set-up is totally fine and correct for SEO purposes. That said, you absolutely could reference fdmgroup.com in offline advertising for stylistic purposes. When people type that URL in, they'll be redirected to the www version just as they are now. This is pretty common because of the stylistic benefits of not including www in TV / print advertising.

Thanks - it's my real name! I'm more a fan of Saruman...

Jane, I've seen the meta refresh reported on this page: http://www.fdmgroup.com/fdm-group-speaks-out-against-the-revelation-that-one-in-four-graduates-fail-to-find-work/ I've since removed the email address on this page. Is meta refresh still an issue? Thanks.

Hi Christopher, You have added canonical tags to http://blog.fdmgroup.com/uk/blog/, pointing to http://www.fdmgroup.com/uk/blog/ so this takes care of the duplicate content problem between those two versions of the blog being the same. For pages like http://www.fdmgroup.com/ca/blog/page/8/, you could look at different pagination options to ensure you receive benefit from these pages. Option 1 in that post (noindex, follow) is one of the simpler ways of doing this, but have a look at the others too.

From developer: "Looking into this, we need to have /uk/blog, /us/blog and /ca/blog in order for them to appear on the menus – we could put a noindex meta tag on the us and ca pages to avoid duplicates?" Or do you recommend href lang tag? Thanks.

Modestos wrote a great guide at http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos that can help you with a few things to look for.

Perfect. Note the #2 item on this list. The key to having international content is treating each country subsite as it's own site. Make sure you have someone from that country consulting you on each country focused site. So if UK, have someone native to the UK review the site. Same for Germany, France, etc. As for structure, my personal favorite is subfolders. So your UK site would be www.domain.com/uk. www.domain.com if you get to the point that you have so many and really need a US one as well, make www.domain.com the "universal" version, and www.domain.com/us as targeted to the US, but it might not be necessary at this point. The content is the big part, if you want to do well internationally, really focus on getting the content right. There will be some overlap, don't worry about that. Focus more on the user experience for people in each area. The only technical thing that needs to be done is for you to geo-target in the respective WMT areas. Does that help?