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They most likely launched both in hopes of getting US and UK traffic to their site. The sites are not identical and therefore they are doing nothing wrong from a traditional SEO standpoint. Now, I don't agree with their idea of having a .co.uk and a .com, they should be fine with one of those.

I am with Miriam, this should not be allowed, but I can see how it was missed by any algorithm catches.

Hi Sam,

I can see how this might be concerning. Without knowing your site, I can't confirm anything but answers to your questions:

1. Bots have been known to "fill out forms" before and at least Googlebot has been known to find pages through the use of Chrome (a user using Chrome). There are many ways, but if you are sure that there is no link to it anywhere, I wouldn't worry about it.
2. No. That is what header codes are there for, to let the bots know what is there, what is forbidden, etc.
3. Other than robots.txt, there isn't any way to stop them from sending in requests. If it gets out of hand, you can try talking to AdWords directly, but more than likely, this is not causing an issue.

Overall, I'd just let it happen. Let them get the 403 error and they'll figure it out. As long as this isn't showing in the organic index, you should be fine.

With HREFLANG tags, you are sending weird signals. I would recommend ensuring that /ie/ is claimed in Google WMT and targeted to Ireland. The content in the subfolder needs to be specific to your Ireland market, meaning it needs to have different content. It doesn't have to be completely different, but different. Otherwise, it looks like duplicate content and the SEs are going to pick the stronger of the two.

Right now, you are telling them that the only difference in the content is that /ie/ is in Irish English, and /gb/ is in British English. It's not different enough to warrant showing the other content over your main homepage as that is stronger.

Does that all make sense? I would remove the HRELFANGs, ensure the right targeting is in place and that the content is different per country to target those countries.

If the page is https://www.example.com/us/product/ then the hreflang on that page should be:

If it is on https://www.example.com/product/ then it is actually the same

The other two lines are not needed. x-default is for your homepage when there is no target and you are asking users to set their target. If you visit https://www.ikea.com/ in an incognito window, you'll see what I mean.

And general en is not needed here. You are using hreflang for helping the SEs understand the difference in the content across countries that use the same language. As much as I hate it for that purpose, they do use this as a signal. General "en" is if you had a business that didn't geo-target and rather just had translations. One page in English, one in Spanish, etc. But no localization.

Also, be aware that in this global economy, the IP does not always determine language (think travelers and expats). Be sure to keep an eye out on conversions and bounce rates on the redirected visitors. It shouldn't be a big issue, but it is something to keep in mind.

Changing the duplicated content will take care of it by itself. It will have to be rewritten for each market though. It is up to you to decide if that is the best course of action for you. If you translate the content using regional dialects (have someone in that region write the page fresh), then hreflang is useful. That's when the en-us and en-ca, etc. come into play. Would something like that be possible?

Hmmm, I am thinking there are two possible solutions.

1. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), but use canonical for the pages that are duplicated, the pages that are the same across all countries.
Also use javascript to detect a new user's location (don't auto redirect though, ask) to get them to the "right" version of the page, if they come into the non-country focused general page.

2. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), and spend the resources to change the content on each page just enough to target that country. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to target that group.

Option 2 is the most time and resource intensive. Option 1 can be messed up quickly if the technical implementation isn't done right.

I know that's not a clean answer but international never is. There are always so many moving parts.

Same to you! Happy to help!

When I say just translating, I mean only translating to the main language of the country and not changing the content. Just translating content is not targeting the country. You should be hiring someone native to that country to help rewrite things for the people in that country. Geotargeting means each country has content that is targeted to them. If a company is not going to take the time to target the content to the country in question, then it is just mere translation and that can cause duplicate content issues.

If the content is the same, but translated, without the hreflang tag, it is duplicate content. The hreflang tag is there to serve as a signal that you know the content is the same but translated and you want Google to know that as well. This situation is exactly what hreflang is made for.

Nope, not needed, unless you are changing the language.

Now, if you wanted to do one big site and then offer certain pages that are the same except for "translation" - and it's a local dialect translation, then yes, HREFLANG would be used in that situation.

So you could use HREFLANG rather than a canonical between the kinda duplicated pages if they are changed only in dialect translation. But since there is different content per country, you would still need that geo-targeted section for the content that is different.

domain.com/congo/about-congo-office (I don't know the country code for Congo) - No hreflang, will be geo-targeted with the subfolder.

domain.com/congo/similar-product-page - If just translated to the local Congo English dialect, use HREFLANG with all similarly "translated" pages. If not changed at all, use canonical to the original page. If changed overall to target the Congo market, no canonical or HREFLANG needed.

I am with Moosa, placing it on another site just for links isn't a good idea. But this isn't content that will get links as it is.

These aren't really articles, but rather requests for services. I am not sure how much traffic this content will bring you but if you want to open it up, I'd still recommend keeping it on one site.

From what I am hearing, nothing much will change across countries, so why geo-target at all? Are you going to be developing any content that is different per country?

Assuming you should geo-target, I'd recommend subfolders (domain.com/uk, domain.com/us, etc.) as you can then use some of the equity from the main domain. Then use WMT in Bing and Google to geotarget those folders to the countries in question.

That is a long URL, but I don't think shortening it will help in terms of SEO. Google is generally good at understanding the structure of your site without the structure of URLs. They are also good at determining the topic without the use of the URL. In my experience, the work from changing the URL is more than it would help.

If you find a reason to change the URL structure in the future that is very necessary (new CMS as an example), update the structure then. Until then, unless you are getting feedback from your users that it is annoying them, I'd leave them as is.

Good Answer Tim, but I am going to add a bit.

Since there are varying services, Tim's recommendation of domain.com/us and domain.com/uk is spot on. If you don't want to change URLs, I understand. You can keep the current URLs, you can geo-target the root to the UK and /us to the US. This route is easier to scale and if you grow each country as it launches, the domain gets stronger which helps each expansion in the years to come.

Now, if you are geo-targeting, there won't be much need for hreflang. If there are some product pages that are IDENTICAL across the two countries other than a few changed words, you can add HREFLANG. Technically speaking you wouldn't need it if the content were written and the pages crafted to each country, but until you get to that point, you can use HREFLANG for the pages that are duplicated. Mind you, this isn't best for your audience, but I get that for starters, that's easier. Do test the pages in each market to see if any modifications can be made for each market.

I don't recommend launching a .co.uk unless your customers/market demand it. That's a lot of marketing work to build up each one.

It sounds like your best bet is / geotarget to GB using Search Console, create a /us for the US, claim that in Search Console and geotarget to the US. Then use hreflang for any duplicated content.

Hope that helps!

I actually think you might be thinking about it too much.

1. Are the articles written by your company about your company like guest posts? If they are and you are asked to link back by the site that posted the guest post, that is a bad link. Those will be detected.

2. Are they real articles written about the company? If so you should promote these in many ways.

3. Why is your company linking to the articles? If it's so that they can point people to what's being said about them, you don't need to remove those links. They are there for a good reason.

If you're doing the linking for your customers and potential customers, you're fine. If you're doing it for SEO purposes or to make someone happy so they will link to you, don't do it.

You need to title the images what they are, not focused to SEO. So if the dress is called the Summer Green in Fields Dress, the file name should be summer-green-fields-dress.jpg (or something like it) and then the alt text be Summer Green in Fields Dress.

If you are targeting the .com at English speaking countries, then why start targeting other sites at specific countries rather than languages? If you targeted the French language (in which you should not use .fr), you'd target more people than targeting France.

Based on your situation, I would have one site with translated content, rather than country-specific content. This would allow you to use the strength of one domain while giving your users the right content in their language.

Using hreflang tags between translated content is how you alert the search engines that the content is the same, just translated.

The one issue I see is that at least for the homepage, these two sites are identical. You have so many different geo-target sites, but between two sites of the same language regardless of location, does anything change? I'm seeing no differences on the homepage so I need to ask.

This might be part of why .be is cached for .nl, you're not giving them something new to index. They are hreflang'd as well, which is telling them even more that the content is the same.

I am going to assume that .be launched before .nl, or has gotten more play in the search results. Something is making it the go to for Dutch.

I am not sure there are titles that will ensure anything. Just like any direct mail or email marketing tactic, people get used to overused ones quickly and easily. My advice is not to use the same title every time, but craft each on to each person you are reaching out to. Trying to do guest posting en masse is not going to be worthwhile for you.