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Regarding this:

Here is thing - we are going to add /ca/ and /us/ versions for clients' convenience only. Native currency, shipping options, and direct contact of our US office. We don't want them ranked separately.

What do you really mean with "we don't want them ranked separately"?

Maybe I'm lost in translation, but I don't understand if you that means that you don't want to have the Canadian version ranking for some sort of fear it may cause issue with the organic visibility of the US version.

However, if you simply mean that you want to use the same domain name for both the US and CA versions, while for the Spanish one you will build the site under a different domain name... then, that's totally fine and I don't see many problems with this mixed subfolders/different domain names strategy.

Using the hreflang annotation will be enough in order to avoid "duplicated content issues" between the CA and US versions.

Regarding if using subfolders or subdomains, I would look at how complex is your ecommerce. If it is based on a very big products' database, hence with added complexity... I would probably choose the subdomain option. Remember also that if you client's side did not have a canadian version, multiplying per 2 the quantity of URLs of the site will also mean an extreme dilution of the domain's pagerank, and a bigger dilution as bigger is the number of the URLs you will add.

Instead, if the ecommerce is a small one (and will stay a small one), using subfolders can be a good option.

Regarding the blog, if you will publish the same posts both for the canadian and usa markets, then my suggestion is to have only one blog for both markets (domain.com/blog/)

Hi!

If with meta tags you mean Title Tag and Meta Description, the ideal should be to localize them in order to answer better to the peculiarities and cultures of the people living in the different and diverse country markets you are targeting.

Because a British users does not think the same way as those living in the USA, and even more of those ones living in Hong Kong or In Geneva (apart that they use a different language).

Localization will surely improve the CTR of the search snippets.

Said that, I strongly suggest you to implement the hreflang annotations too, in order to be sure that Google will show the correct version of your site to each geotargeted market.

As your own agency told, I too consider that when the hreflang will be implemented, this kind of issues should terminate.

Regarding the sitemap error, it was surely something that could be confusing Google about what site to target.

However, I see that you have also an .eu domain name...

I imagine that that domain is meant for targeting the European market and I suspect that it is in English.

If it is so, remember:

1. In countries like Spain, France, Germany, italy... we don't search in Internet using English, but Spanish, French, German, Italian... Therefore, that .eu domain is not going to offer you those results you maybe are looking for;
2. The .eu domain termination is a generic one, and cannot be geotargeted via Google Search Console. This means that - by default - it targets all the world, hence, you probably can see visits from English speaking users in countries like South Africa, UK, IE, Australia, New Zealand or India, where English is the main language or one of the official ones;
3. When it comes to domains like .eu and hreflang, it is always hard to decide how to implement it. In your specific case, as you are targeting UK, US, AU and IE with specific domain names, the ideal would be to implement this hreflang annotation for the .eu (the example is only for the home page):

<rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.eu" hreflang="x-default"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.eu" hreflang="en"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.com" hreflang="en-GB"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.us" hreflang="en-US"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.com.au" hreflang="en-AU"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate">

With those annotations, you are telling Google to show the .com to users in Great Britain, the .us to users in United States, the .au to Australian ones and the .eu to all the other users using English in any other country.

That will mean that your .eu site surely will target also users in others European countries, both using english when searching (hreflang="en") and other languages (hreflang="x-default").

2 notes about the hreflang="x-default":

1. People living in the UK and searching in Spanish will see the .eu domain name, because it is the default domain name for searches in every language but English in GB, IE, AU and US;

2. Again, even if you pretend the .eu domain to target only European countries, that is impossible, because the .eu termination doesn't have any geotargeting power (and regions like Europe or Asia cannot be geotargeted via GSC). So it will be normal to see visit also from countries in others continents.

You wrote this, and I'd like you to explain it better:

Each domain will only be in the preferred language of each country (but the user will be able to change the language via cookies).

Why people - for instance Italians - should be even feeling the need to switch the language from Italian to English?

Sincerely, I find it useless.

What you should do is doing like Amazon does: let people visit whatever version they want. For instance (I live in Spain), when I am in the UK and I want to buy something in Amazon, I visit amazon.es. Even if Amazon knows that I'm in the UK, and advices me that maybe I may prefer to shop in the .co.uk website, it lets me stay, navigate and buy from the .es one.

You, then, say this:

Each URL will link to the same link in other countries via direct link and also via hreflang. The point of this is that all the link relevance that any of them gets, will be transmitted to all other sites.

This is not that true. At least, not literally. In fact, the PageRank any page of yours will earn via internal and external links will just partly be passed to the other country versions corresponding pages. This because the PageRank flows through every link present in a page, both internal and external links, and "evaporates" in case of nofollow links.

About your questions:

• Do you think that there are any possible problems with this strategy?

Overall it is correct (being the only doubt the "cookie" thing you talked about)

Is it possible that I'll have problems with duplicate content? (like I said before, all domains will be assigned to a specific geographic target)

If you use the hreflang, you should not have issues related to duplicated content.

Each site will have around 2.000.000 of URLs. Do you think that this could generate problems? It's possible that only primary and other important locations will have URLs with high quality external links and a decent TrustRank.

Having millions of URLs should not be a problem... if it was so sites like Etsy, Home Depot or Amazon would be suffering it, wouldn't they? When it comes to Big Sites, the most important thing is having a very solid architecture and work very well everything internal linking.

Any other consideration or related experience with a similar process will be very appreciated as well.

When implementing the hreflang annotations, try not using as many hreflang as country versions are present.

In other words, apart the home page (for obvious localized brand visibility and for avoiding having, for instance, the .com version outranking the local one for being more authoritative), in the internal pages use only the hreflang annotation in order to suggest Google what version to show in case of countries sharing the same language.

For instance, let's take that www.dominio.com/page-a is in English and targeting the USA, then the hreflang annotation would be only relative to all the others URLs of pages in English and targeting others English speaking countries, but you should not add the annotation for the spanish speaking versions or italian.

Why? Because the languages are different and such a strong signal that you don't need to explain to Google that it should present to Spanish speaking users in Spain the URL of the spanish country version instead of the American English one.

You are using bad the x-default annotation (I must admit, though, that I did not completely understood the code you copy/pasted in your question).

The x-default is meant for showing to Google what URL to show to those users, who are not explicitly targeted by a dedicated version of the website.

For instance, if we are targeting both USA and UK, but we know that the USA version has traction also in other countries like AU, NZ, South Africa and Spain, then we could use the x-default so to suggest Google that the USA URLs should be shown to all people independently of the language (in my example, not only English speaking users, but also Spanish speaking ones) and geography (not only the USA, but also all the others countries). The only exception will be the UK, because with the hreflang="en-GB" we are telling Google to shown the UK version of the site to English speaking users in Great Britain.

The only solution I see in your case is consistency between the two versions. You must choose with which architecture option to go and use just that. Only after you should think in the hreflang implementation.

Hi Ozil,

did the answer by Matt and Jimmy offered you hints so to help you better in the strategic decision you were looking to solve?

Said that, as Matt told, your question is too big to be answered in a simple Q&A, apart that all the possible recommendations would have the defect of being "generalistic", because this kind of strategic decision can be taken only knowing the detail of your business plan and not only of your website itself.

Ciao

Gianluca

As Maurice wrote,

I urge to remember that American English is different from British English, therefore it would be useful to revisit the content in order to make it fit to how English is spoken/written in the USA. That would have an impact in how Americans perceive the site, for localization and, obviously, for SEO geo-targeting.

Then, yes, use the hreflang annotations in order to clearly suggest to Google what version must be shown to whom, geo-target the USA site on Google Search Console (and do not forget to do the same in Bing).

Regarding what to choose between a new domain name, subfolder or subdomain for the USA website, that choice must be taken considering not only SEO factors.

1. For instance, if your UK website is already receiving interesting volume of traffic, when you can reasonably think to go for an independent domain name (it should be a generic, because in the USA the ccTld .us is not even considered "american"), so that you could create also a very geo-targeted experience for the USA audience.
2. If you have traffic, but not in great proportions, and if your website is not an ecommerce or one with a very complex and big URL structure and database, then you can think opting for the subfolder option.
3. On the contrary, if your traffic from the USA is not big already and the site architecture is complex and the database very big, then it would be better going for the subdomain option.

In the last 2 cases, though, the ideal would be to finally migrate the USA site to an independent domain name once the visibility in the USA, both in terms of Search and Brand recognition, has reached sustainable levels.

Finally, remember that the .com is much harder than the .co.uk, so be prepared to struggle more than you have done until now for earning in the USA the same results you earned in UK.

Hi,

I don't have a specific document to show you, but that statement is consequence of mine and many others international SEO experience.

Moreover, Google quit every mention of the contemporary use of the hreflang and the canonical tag from the helps pages about hreflang.

Hi Keyleigh,

in a case like your, when you are targeting audiences using different languages, to use the hreflang is not an obligation, because you are giving Google enough language targeting signals already.

However, as Ariel wrote in his answer, I suggest to use at least for the home page and for those pages that usually are shown in the SERPs for brand name queries (the home page, for instance, but it could be also the about us page).

In fact, apart the potential sitelink issue, for the brand name search, Google could decide to show the "home page" with the highest authority, and not necessarily the one in the language corresponding to the users.

Said that, Google suggests using the hreflang practically always, hence - if it is not a complication - I would implement it.

One recommendation, though, use the hreflang only on URLs that are canonical and not in canonicalized one. Contemporary usage of hreflang and rel="canonical" is not recommended.

Thanks Brooke for sharing my post here on Moz.

90% of what I wrote is still valid, but the hreflang part, because in that moment Google was suggesting to use cross-domain canonical in case two or more pages were serving the same content in the same language in combination with the hreflang annotation, and to do so in order to avoid duplicated content issues.

After 3 years that suggestion is not valid anymore, mostly because of Google itself, which recognized it said a very stupid thing.

So, right now, if you have two or more websites serving the same content in the same language, but targeting users in different countries (eg.: domain.com for USA, domain.co.uk for UK and domain.ie for Ireland), then you should only use the hreflang annotations, because they are enough for alerting Google to not consider those pages as traditional duplicated content.

(note to myself: I need to ask to update that post)

Hi Mirko,

can we consider this Q&A as answered or are you still struggling with this issue?

Hi!

Do you have any news about this issue?

Can I have multiple defaults for a single URL when not using x-default?

Could you explain better?

Hreflang is alternate annotation... so - for instance - in the en-US home page you must indicate the alternative home pages for en (meant for global use of the en-GB, british version of your site), fr-FR (or fr only), en-CA and zh-hans, and vice versa in all the pages.

If you mean if the x-default can be different on a URL by URL situation - for instance if you want to set up a british product page as default for all users not targeted with specific geotargeting version of the same product page - in theory that is possible, because the hreflang is URL specific and not domain wide.

Said that, you should always state that the british version is meant for all English speaking users apart the geotargeted one (hreflang="en").

The xdefault will tell Google to show the british version URL to all the users from countries and languages not specifically geotargeted (eg.: Spanish speaking users from Spain).

My answer is the correct. See what I replied above to Dmitrii

Lol! You're right. I was indeed thinking about Belgium and not Netherlands

It's a cultural thing. I'm that province of Italy people talk or Italian or German, so if you want to target both with your multilingual site you must tell it to Google with hreflang, even if it is not listed in the ISO chart.

you do the same for targeting Spanish speaking people in the usa, for instance.

Yes, it exists (it is Alto Agide/South Tirol), and it's the same case of Netherlands (fr-NL and de-NL) or Switzerland (it-CH, fr-CH and de-CH)

Yes, you can.

No Dirk, the language must be en-GB, UK is not ISO  valid (and that's a classic mistake people do with hreflang).

Apart everything Dirk said in his answer, I suggest you to put the UK version under the .com domain name.

In fact, if you put your UK version under an /uk/ subfolder in .com.au, you won't be able to geo-target the subfolder itself via Google Search Console, because Google will geotarget it automatically toward Australia.

So, your UK version will have very big problems being properly visible in google.co.uk.

If we want to use subfolders for targeting different countries (or languages), it is always better - and somehow an obligation - to use a generic domain name.

p.s.: my comment is caused by what you write here:

The plan is for each country will have its own sub-folder e.g. www.domain.com/us, www.domain.com.au/au, www.domain.com.au/uk

I don't know if that was a mistake or a mixup or it was correct