duplicate sites UK & USA

is this spamming?

[buttercup25]

Hi
We currently have a successful site based in the UK with a .co.uk address. We would now like to market our product to the US and have bought a good .com url. My problem is that inevitably a good deal of content and the structure of the site will be identical to the .co.uk site, will this lead to my .co.uk being penalized? How much do I have to change for it not to be considered spamming?

Thanks in advance

Ally

[dougmcc1]

Hi Ally :)

I just answered a question similar to yours here [webmasterworld.com].

As martinibuster said:

What is the threshold of duplication? Nobody can say with certainty.

But if your sites are too identical only one of your sites will show up in Google's results. After a while they may apply a penalty, but who knows. I shoot for at least a 25% difference in my pages. Don't calculate it obviously, but keep it in mind as you build your pages.