The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
June 2005, Volume 4, Issue 6

Globalized SEO: Avoiding Duplicate Content on Same-Language Sites

by Jennifer MacLean, Algorithmic Search Specialist, iProspect

So you’ve globalized your online presence, having recognized the value of creating localized websites for the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. You have websites, sub-domains or sub-directories geared towards each country, and you’re just waiting for all the search traffic to start rolling in.

Don’t Hold Your Breath

Your .com website is doing just great in the natural search engine rankings, so you would think that your other sites (.uk, .au, .ca, .nz) would also hold top search engine rankings, particularly in their respective country-specific search properties. But perhaps your .co.uk domain site is buried on page 10, while Canada, Australia, and New Zealand aren’t even on the radar in their country-specific search engines.

So why would the .com site be out-performing your other country sites? The answer probably lies within the content.

If you did little more than take content from your company’s main domain and stick it onto other domains with different country extensions – possibly changing your local “flavor” to international “flavour” – you haven’t done enough to differentiate the on-page content between the different versions. And you’re not going to get the intended effect from those country-specific websites.

Blame it on Duplicate Content

Granted, there’s a legitimate business reason for having these country-specific websites, and it’s not like you’re trying to “spam” the search engines. You’re trying to target customers who live in five different countries, where most of the residents happen to speak the same primary language.

The problem lies in competition: If you have five websites, all with substantially duplicated content, all of those websites are going to be competing for top rankings on the same keyword phrases and nearly identical page content. The global search landscape is competitive enough these days without the added hurdle of internal rivalry. In a search engine showdown, the website that existed first likely has the most established link popularity, and therefore is almost always going to be awarded the greatest visibility and authority over the younger country-specific sites.

It’s not a direct penalization by the search engines, but when your U.K. website isn’t getting any decent rankings because of the prominence of your U.S. site, you’re going to have a bit of a sticky wicket. (Editor’s Note: See John Krochure’s article on Duplicate Content in this issue regarding “penalization.”)

Overcoming the Challenge

Getting around this challenge isn’t very difficult, but will require some thought and effort. The key is differentiation. It’s not enough to color your U.S. content with colourful spelling changes, or to convert all standard unit measurements to the metric system. To truly differentiate same-language websites, and truly target the audience in each country, content for a website should ideally be built from the ground up. English speakers in the U.S. use different terminology to talk about (or search for) something than those in the U.K., just as an English speaker in Canada uses different words than someone in Australia.

Consider every facet of the country your website is targeting, from local measurement systems, to idiomatic language differences, to general marketing concepts. This kind of differentiation need not affect the overall look and feel of your company’s messaging, but it will help prevent duplication across websites. And even if you can’t put the kind of time and energy needed into extensive market research in order to build content from scratch, there are plenty of ways to make each website distinctive:

Make sure all meta data is absolutely unique for each of the different country websites; don’t just copy and paste the U.S. meta tags on all of your other English-language sites.
Take every opportunity to include the site’s country name as a differentiator. For instance, all occurrences of WidgetCorp on the Australia website should be WidgetCorp Australia. While this shouldn’t be the sole means of making each country site different, it is a significant part of it.
Target variations of keyword phrases; if you’re focusing on “auto insurance” on the U.S. site, consider “car insurance” on the U.K. site. An understanding of market language within each country should drive keyword phrase choices. For example, a U.S. customer books a car rental while a U.K. customer books a car hire; a customer from Canada may do a search for hotels, while an Australian customer searches for accommodations.
Localize content wherever possible. Instead of copier machines, consider New Zealand copier machines.

In short, for common-language websites that target multiple countries, it is important to distinguish between them by using the language of the geo-cultural market you’re targeting. This will be a benefit for your users, and help avoid competition for terms and resulting poor visibility for the bulk of the country domains. Click here to subscribe to the Search Marketing Advisor newsletter now.

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: June 2005, Volume 4, Issue 6

Globalized SEO: Avoiding Duplicate Content on Same-Language Sites

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
June 2005, Volume 4, Issue 6