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Hi, Yes, it will be a pain for your writers, but that's what they're paid for. For example, if you had four t-shirts, all different colours, it wouldn't be too difficult to write unique content for each. I wouldn't use the same content and just change the colour, this may cause you problems.

Hi Guys Thanks for the quick response.  Okay, having read through the links and other resources on hreflang="x" and how to implement it I have a couple of follow up questions if you don't mind. Question 1: Using http://www.abercrombiekids.com as an example which I found, the source of their homepage has many alternate links to other sub domains or ccTLD's. The idea here I presume is that it notifies the search engine where alternative versions of the same content can be found  (even though that some of the content presumably is in a different language which I find strange...). So the idea of this is then for Google to index those alternate webpages but assign them to the www.google.?? search engine somehow? Question 2: In my site homepage for the .CO.UK site, I would have 1 alternate href as "x-default" (for the .co.uk domain) and then 2 alternate hrefs to the homepages of the USA site and the Australian site.  And this process would change depending on which site I am looking at i.e. the USA site would set itself as the "x-default" and link to the other 2 domains as alternates - is that correct? Question 3: Finally, do I need to apply this methodology to EVERY page on all 3 sites indicating which is the default and which is alternate? Kind regards and appreciation for your feedback. Kris

Hi Tony Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. I take on board your comments regarding the top level menu structure, I will discuss this with my designer and see how we can get this to work. Regarding the noindex of the "Air Filters" landing pages for example, the reason why I thought this would be applicable (in my original structure plan)  is largely due to the fact that the page content (i.e. the products listed in here) will be for the most part a collection of the products listed across my additional "Audi Air Filters" and "Ford Air Filters" pages so would this not be content canonicalization? I thought noindexing the "Air Filters" landing pages would be the correct thing to do? Thanks. Kris

Technically, it should be ok, but this is a scenario that behave unpredictably, and it's why many mobile SEO folks seems to be recommending more and more moving away from alternate domains. You're doing it the way Google recommends for your situation, as far as I'm aware, but I would monitor the situation very, very carefully, and make sure that there's not crossover or duplicate content issues. It's a bit technically challenging, but you may also want to make sure that Googlebot-Mobile is hitting the proper site. See this advice: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/redirects

Using ccTLDs is the heaviest factor you could use to geotarget your websites and in that case you shouldn't need to use local IP addresses for geotargeting, although if you have the budget, it could give you an extra boost along helping you with other factors such as latency. You won't be able to use Google's webmaster tools geographic target since this feature is only for gTLDs, ccTLDs are targeted to it's country by default. Some resources that could prove useful: Working with multi-regional websites International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target - Whiteboard Friday

I believe that goes with a jquery plugin that has something to do with text container size.  Our devs have used it before and it looked like that.  I don't believe it has anything to do with SEO.

Everrett had a great post on the SEOmoz blog the other day.  It covers this exact question.  I always thought like you did but he makes a very strong case for the shorter URL.  If the only difference in the product is what category it is listed in then bread crumbs should do the trick.  If they are distinct pages and products then the user is going to be able to figure it out. I really think the breadcrumbs is going to be the solution you are looking for.  Most Ecommerce solutions have this in it's core development but some allow you to add it in with little effort.

Many Thanks Rand (and Geoff). The thoughts and opinions of other SEO community members (and CEO's!) who have "walked the walk" is priceless advice in my opinion. Kris

It would certainly not have any impact on the existing rankings and crawl rate. infact the crawl rate would improve

We have taken the view that we will leave our "site by" links alone, we are ranking well for key phrases and the danger being that changing these links will affect it. That said, we have removed links from some client websites with poor DA and PR as a precaution and it doesn't seem to have done us any harm, in fact i think it may have improved SERPs on a few keywords, but a little early to say for sure.