Setting Up hreflang on ccTLD & TLD

[Lowkei]

Dear community,

I have a situation with hreflang & canonical.

URL.com is a content site. I write a lot. In fact, there are 1 series of contents that I wrote are very similiar but they are targeted at different country (with all written in English language). To avoid duplicate contents and to receive alternate benefit, I put up codes like this in all those pages:

rel=’alternate’ hreflang=’en’ href=’URL.com/best-widget/’
rel=’alternate’ hreflang=’en-US’ href=’URL.com/best-widget/’
rel=’alternate’ hreflang=’en-SG’ href=’URL.com/best-widget-singapore/’
rel=’alternate’ hreflang=’en-AU’ href=’URL.com/best-widget-australia/’
rel=’alternate’ hreflang=’x-default’ href=’URL.com/best-widget/’

Those pages differ in term of currency used and widget-discussed. As much as 80% of the rest of the contents are the same. I set up canonical tags for all of those contents too.

rel=”canonical” href=”URL.com/best-widget/”
rel=”canonical” href=”URL.com/best-widget-singapore/”
rel=”canonical” href=”URL.com/best-widget-australia/”

This set up avoided cannibalism. The right version is ranking for the right locale.

Problem arises when I decided to get a ccTLD for Singapore. I am going to set up a ‘URL.com.sg’ and copy-paste all contents from ‘URL.com’, on top of creating some localised unique contents.

My question is, what is the correct way to set up hreflang on both URL.com & URL.com.sg? As there will be multiple webpages that share the same contents & same hreflang, namely:

en-US
URL.com/best-widget/
URL.com.sg/best-widget/

en-SG
URL.com/best-widget-singapore/
URL.com.sg/best-widget-singapore/

en-AU
URL.com/best-widget-australia/
URL.com.sg/best-widget-australia/

And all of them are canonical contents.

Thanks in advance for any kind advice. My head is spinning already trying to explain.

[dennisjensen]

Hi, It sounds like you're moving your content away from your original page. Do a series of 301 redirects of your existing Singapore-pages to your new domain once you have moved the content and build from there. I wouldn't try to entertain duplicate content on both your old and your new pages.

[Lowkei]

i see.. so it sounds like moving content away.

The logic for my action is not moving away, rather, optimizing the content to target local more by putting it up in a ccTLD. The thing is, the same piece of optimised content is also appreciated by the international audience. If I put up a 301 redirect on the existing Singapore-pages, it becomes illogical for international audience to read it in a ccTLD.

Thoughts please?

[dennisjensen]

Well, to me that does sound like you will end up with duplicate content. I'm not familiar with your system, but even if you redirect your 'original' Singapore pages, the content would still be available on the other localized pages. In other words, only your singapore-users would experience this and be, I hope, pleased by the new ccTLD you have. That is what you want, right?

[supafresh]

If your goal is to keep content on both sites, i would use a cross canonical your existing SG pages to your new SG domain. That should allow you to keep content on both sites without 301 and avoid a duplicate penalty.