Forum Moderators: phranque
we're building a site for a product range, which we are going to offer in 6 European countries. What we have is a whole bunch of domains along the lines of widget-country.countrytld and we need to cover 3 languages (German, Dutch, French). The content comes from a CMS and is the same for all languages.
What we want to do is, to serve the right language depending on what URL the visitor requests:
widget-deutschland.de -> German Version
widget-schweiz.ch -> German Version
widget-suisse.ch -> French Version
etc.
No problems so far. But what can we do in order to avoid duplicate content penalties? As you can see above with widget-deutschland.de and widget-schweiz.ch, the SAME content will be served for TWO domains (actually we will have widget-austria.at as well pointing to the German content). On top of that, each entry-point will allow you to change languages, so even if you start with widget-suisse.ch, you can still select German).
The easiest solution would be to have ONE top-domain for all of these, but this is not possible due to product-political reasons.
So, any advice?
Good luck,
Burner
First of all, I don't like to call it a "penalty" - it is just that SEs don't want domains from the same "family" cluttering up the SERPs.
But the reason you want them is so that you get ranked in the individual search engines (especially in the restricted searches) and the reason the company wants them is for internal politics (which we can forget).
So I would say let one rank for German - say the .de - and give an on-page option for switches to the .ch and .at sites if they prefer to change to their local content (local dealers or whatever).
Then the only time you will have a problem with the .de is with a Switzerland-only search, and then you have your .ch domain which will pop into the results because the .de is not eligible...
Does that make sense?
So I would say let one rank for German - say the .de - and give an on-page option for switches to the .ch and .at sites if they prefer to change to their local content (local dealers or whatever).
There is no individual content based on country, only based on language. Having them all using country-specific URL's is more like a courtesy, intending to say "We value your business so much that we even got one of your country domains" (for whatever it is worth).
How - in your idea - can I have "rank one for German" without having Austria and Switzerland as well?
Then the only time you will have a problem with the .de is with a Switzerland-only search, and then you have your .ch domain which will pop into the results because the .de is not eligible...Unfortunately I can't have a Swiss (or Austrian or whatever) IP for the country specific sites. They'll all have German IP's - actually they all share the same (German) IP.
Does that make sense?
A bit. Any other input from somebody else?
