3 replies to this topic

[Guy]

Now then (traditional Yorkshire greeting )

A customer has a global site with multi-country content that I'm helping them to restructure - from a usability and seo perspective.

I've been scratching my head for a few weeks over the best compromise for urls that the site will use.

www.globalsite.com
will have uk content under www.globalsite.com/uk
will have german content (in German) under www.globalsite.com/de
etc.

I would also like to serve the same content found in www.globalsite.com/de
under the url www.globalsite.de
I could redirect www.globalsite.de to www.globalsite.com/de - but would like to emphasise that this is a local country site through the use of a local domain.

Do you know if Google would penalise this for having mirrored content under a different domain name?

cheers

Guy

[awall19]

Hello Guy
You do not want to mirror the content. Simply redirect that country specific domain to that location in your main site.

[Randy]

I've never done this, but let's throw it out there and get some opinions since it's been on my mind lately. Hopefully those who are more familiar with the regional schtuff will chime in.

In a case like this would be better to 301 Perm Redirect the .de or .uk domain to the .com, or would it be better to have the .com as the "parent" site and then 301 the regional content to a .uk, etc domain?

Would both get listed in the local searches? Or if you did it kinda backwards like described above would you end up covering all of the bases better? ie have the .com listed in the World searches, but additionally get the .uk, .de, etc listed in the regional directories more easily.

Opinions anyone?

[Guy]

Thanks for the input

I think we'll keep it safe and 301 the .de and .co.uk domains to the .com/uk .com/de directories and then rely on dmoz to add country specific relevency to the content.

We can always switch the domains on later to serve the content but I think awall19 is correct in warning against mirroring content.

Guy