US version of our existing website - SEO copy duplication?
-
Hi,
We are planning to launch a dedicated US version of our existing e-commerce website.
The US version will sit on a separate domain and will be completely standalone to our existing website.
My question is, since a lot of the pages are product pages and will exist on each respective site. Does the copy have to be completely re-written (or just slightly) on the new US site in order to avoid any SEO duplicate copy issues with the existing site?
Any advice would be much appreciated
-
Hi Kate,
In my experience you may have problems with getting your sites to rank in their respective locales. I've also seen sites like this treated as duplicate content (even though they shouldn't be really).
There's a couple of things that I'd recommend that you do:
-
Target the sites via webmaster tools to US / UK as appropriate see - http://www.seo-chicks.com/1463/geotargeting-on-the-same-domain-using-xml-sitemaps.html
-
Take steps to ensure you're targeting the right keywords (there are plenty of differences between US and UK English)
-
Implement rel-alternate hreflang see - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
-
Include local signals - e.g. local telephone numbers, bricks and mortar addresses etc to help the search engines understand which locales you're targeting
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
-
I would be very careful about this. Here's what I would ask you: 1. Do you want both the US and presuming the other is UK site to rank in both Google.com and Google.co.uk ? 2. Is the UK site on a .co.uk domain and hosted in UK ? Is it ranking well ? How well does it perform on Google.com ? 3. Would you have 100% of the products in the same category structure on the .com site ? 4. Would it use the same shopping cart platform ? I would look into whether you can target the .co.uk site for US searches. If not, I would look into each of the above points and see how you can separate the .com site as much as possible from the .co.uk site.
-
IMO you'll only have to rephrase the sentences and Americanise (Americanize) the site... But use this exercise as a positive, it'll give you the opportunity to be even more descriptive about the products you sell, which can only help..
and don't forget to be imaginative with your H1 and H2...
Good Luck
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO implications of changing Date/Time format on website
Looking for some advice on an area that I can't seem to find much research about online. Since starting our website, it's always been hosted in the UK and targeting UK visitors. That means we always had the date/time format of the website as DD.MM.YY for example. We've now changed business focus and are targeting US visitors. We recently moved the site over to US hosting, and our web developers have instructed that we change to US date/time format (MM.DD.YY). My question is, are there any implications on doing this from an SEO perspective? Obviously, all our historic blog posts will need to have their date updated from, for example, 9 July to July 9. Does this make any difference at all? Anyone got any insights as to what best practice with this is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteratS20 -
I'm in Canada and building a website for the US...approach?
Hi there - we already have a Canadian website for the company and we're building one for our American branch. From an SEO perspective what is the best approach here? We have already purchased a .com domain and the company is branded a little different in the US than in Canada. How do I tell Google that this site is American and should be served primarily to the American audience? Should I be tagging duplicate content with rel=canonical (for similar pages like the About us section for instance) or does that matter here? Hope you guys can help. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MelcorDev0 -
Hosting Providers and SEO
I have been wondering for a while which web host provider is the best for SEO purposes? Things to consider. Shared Hosting vs Dedicated Server Location of the Host Provider Site Up Time One question that I have been thinking about is what impact would changing a host provider have on a websites serps ranking? Is there a possible negative impact and if so how can it be avoided? Name the top 3 Web Hosts for SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0 -
How does a competing website with clearly black hat style SEO tactics, have a far higher domain authority than our website that only uses legitimate link building tactics?
Through SEO Moz link analysis tools, we looked at a competing websites external followed links and discovered a large number of links going to Blog pages with domain authorities in the 90's (their blog page authorities were between 40 and 60), however the single blog post written by this website was exactly the same in every instance and had been posted in August 2011. Some of these blog sites had 160 or so links linking back to this competing website whose domain authority is 49 while ours is 28, their Moz Trust is 5.43 while ours is 5.18. An example of some of the blogs that link to the competing website are: http://advocacy.mit.edu/coulter/blog/?p=13 http://pest-control-termite-inspection.posterous.com/\ However many of these links are "no follow" and yet still show up on Open Site Explorer as some of this competing websites top linking pages. Admittedly, they have 584 linking root domains while we have only 35, but if most of them are the kind of websites posted above, we don't understand how Google is rewarding them with a higher domain authority. Our website is www.anteater.com.au Are these tactics now the only way to get ahead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter.Huxley590 -
Need bullet points for a new website on what to do for SEO
Hello, My company just launched a new website and its a competitve market it looks like. Its for moving boxes and moving supplies. They want a bullet point list (nothing real specific) of what I will be doing for SEO for the new website. I have been out of the loop for more than a year with SEO so not sure what the best things to do first are. Any help would be great. Thanks John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maximumrank0 -
"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines). Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients. Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area. Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing. This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies. I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics). Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal: Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)? If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically: Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'? Are images as important as copy in differentiating content? From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)? Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results. My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names. Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent. In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions. Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localizedseo0 -
Critique My Site For SEO
Hi Everyone, I was wondering if someone might critique my site and let me know what you think. I've done pretty much everything I know to do proper seo for my site. I'd love to hear some critiques about what I am doing wrong. I'm not sure if my titles are okay, being that they are similar amongst pages. The other thing is that for all the javascript buttons on the top I have no followed them since they don't have any anchor text. The way google will crawl my page is through the links in the footer. I was thinking of moving them throughout the body of the page since I hear google isn't giving as much weight to footer links. I also wanted to hear what you think about putting a blog on my site and updating with fresh content as opposed to creating a separate blog and then linking back to my website with anchor text. Thanks for all the help. And glad to be a member Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wsh150