Hi everybody, I came upon a big issue related to contents duplication. I have a tourist website (.com) aimed at the usa market; though, I've now reached a very reasonable amount of traffic from uk as well. So I'm thinking of launching a .co.uk version of my website, which will mostly focus on uk travellers (for example, I'll most review destinations where uk travellers go). Now the point is: how to act as for contents that will be required to be published into the both websites (.com and .co.uk)? I mean, language is the same (english, obviously...), so what about copying my Paris Travel Guide (for example) from the .com site and pasting it into the new .co.uk site? Will I get some penalization for having the same content into two different websites? Both website are of mine, both websites have the same domain, only the extension changes (.com or .co.uk). I noticed that many international websites don't worry of using the same contents into the various intl versions of the website, like tripadvisor, for example. Has anyone faced with something like that in the past? Any tip, suggestion? That would be highly appreciated... Thanks
That's a good question and the best answer I would give is that if it is useful to the user, then you would always either link out to it on your UK version...for example, write a short post for that topic... blah blah blah.............................you can find our complete guide on our united states version of the site................blah blah.... OR.... I would just post it on that version of the site, duplicate content is only an issue if you are trying to steal away from a users expierence. You won't get in trouble for having one article that is the the 2 versions. I wouldn't worry about it...BUT, if you do put dup. content on one domain...for example if you decided to have 2 versions on the same domain do this: Put a canonical tag on this article referenceing to the US version. The problem with the canonical tag is that it can't cross over domains, so if you use .co.uk then it won't work. whatever.com/uk/thearticle.html <---with canonical tag to us version of article whatever.com/us/thearticle.html <---orig. article The tag will also pass creidt back to the orig. article helping it rank better. I did consulting for a large electronics company and they had a similar issue and ended up having to use directories (/us, /uk, /de/ /fr, etc etc) instead of dif. TLD's. (.com, .co.uk, .fr, .de, etc...) There is another guy on here, named "Canonical" that might have a better answer...I think he use to work for Yahoo or MSN...can't remember.
I like this suggestion. If it's a block you can use trackbacks as well. Another suggestion to have have someone rewrite the articles.
Try to avoid using same articles. It is not wise as bots are not human, they may mark your site as content thief. Re-write your articles to avoid this issues.
Thanks to all, guys, your support is highly appreciated... I will never publish same contents (dup) on same domain, so Canonical tag can't help me so much... as it don't work for specifying same contents on different sites/domains.. well, I need dif TLD's to "market" the different versions of the website; this will also help me with ranking... I've something like 200 countries and over 1000 worldwide cities reviewed into travel guides... I won't be ever achieve to re-write all this! However, how can I be marked as content-thief, if contents are anyway of mine? And what if I modify pages' layout (say <title> and metatags, h1, etc...) and just keep the inner content the same? Thanks in advance..