TLD Duplicate content and multisite issues
Posted on 30. Aug, 2009 by Marc McDermott in SEO
This week’s blog involves a common question about multisite and duplicate content issues related to sites with several TLD’s (ie .com, .co.uk, etc)
The most common scenario is an e-commerce website that exists in multiple languages and/or currencies. If my target markets are both the United States and United Kingdom for example, I may or may not opt for the .com and .co.uk versions of my domain. So the question is, in it’s raw form, will Google treat these sites as the same and label them as dup content? Absolutely.
So what do we do. Well of course the easiest way to rectify the situation is to 301 redirect to the primary domain TLD. Apart from a 301, you may also do well to place the canonical link element in the head wrapper of the secondary site(s).
My advice? If my small business was in this scenario, the only reason I would have multiple TLDs for my domain is for brand protection. All of my TLD’s would be 301 redirected to their respected sub domains (ie if someone types in www.mydomain.co.uk – I will 301 that to uk.mydomain.com). Now if that UK content is identical to my primary content, I would then make use of the canonical link element.
The ideal situation would be to take the time to make uk.mydomain.com unique content that is specifically targeting the UK market. A lot of people think that you need to have a .co.uk TLD to rank high in the UK SERPS. Well this is no longer the case – Google is now smart enough to detect what content will best suite different global markets.
My end goal is to have unique content in each applicable sub domains, and if done properly, can certainly outrank other .co.uk domains in the google.co.uk SERPS.
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