Avoiding Cannibalizing in Ranking International Domains

[YulesB]

We have 2 websites (2 different domains). Both are in English, but one is for UK (.co.uk) and 1 general/global (.com) website. Some of the content is the same and we target the same topic and keywords, though it is not translated directly. I know that cannibalizing is a problem when you are having different domains with the same language and the same or similar topics.
And we are having this problem. The global website outranks the UK website for searches in the UK.

Besides optimizing content is there any way we can prevent cannibalizing? Some technical solution?

We use hreflang attributes for the UK: hreflang="en-gb" and for the global website we use hreflang="en"

Would it help to add a x-default attribute to the global website and could we add this to all pages or just the homepage?

Many thanks in advance for any help on this

[jediviper]

Can u make your UK content look more local?
For example include locations from UK or info/facts from the English area?

I don't think that the x-default will make of any difference.

[anallawalla]

In addition to hreflang, have you given the UK domain a lang attribute and a set of schema tags, e.g. country, on every page? You will need to show more UK linkages if possible - do you have a physical address there? A UK phone number?

An extreme step would be to block the .com site from the UK, i.e. redirect all clicks to the UK equivalent.

[FranticFish]

Were both sites launched at the same time, or is the UK site newer than the international one?

It might well be that the international site has more authority in Google's eyes so they would favour it. If this is the case then you could work on getting the UK site more UK-specific authority and citations. Building on jediviper's idea of more UK-specific content you could also build partnerships with and do outreach involving UK-based businesses / UK-hosted domains, as these will tend to have UK-centric link profiles.