How to use the canonical tag for multiregion websites and duplicate content

Question

We want to use the canonical tag for an multiple region website with the same content.

For Example:

1. www.example.com/services.htm
2. www.example.com/uk/services.htm

Then if we use the canonical tag on the page/uk/services.htm pointing to /services.htm , then the UK region sub folder will be index by Google or not. Because I need to rank on Google's UK search also. Please explain me how to use.

Answer 1

The canonical tag tells spiders and other automated thingies that all URLs that return pages with the same tag are all effectively returning the exact same page. I don't think you want to tell robots that your UK and US pages are identical unless they really are. Do they show different currency? Do they maybe even spell words differently?

Furthermore, extend the same concept to other countries that you may soon support. Your German page will be more significantly different than your US and UK pages are. You really don't want to confuse robots by sharing canonical address for pages in different languages and different currencies.

Answer 2

If you use the canonical tag like this you will find that the canonicalized content will outrank all of the other regions content and this will skew your traffic. If you are happy to accept that (and off hand i dont know any other way) then put the rel canonical tag in the duplicated content and point it to the original. A good guide to doing this is here:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

If there is any scope to rewrite your duplicate content to make it unique I would.

Good luck

Answer 3

"Hack" it by using this meta tag rel="alternate" hreflang="x"

I recommend you checkout:

Source: Many websites serve users from around the world, with content that's translated, or targeted to users in a certain region. The rel="alternate" hreflang="x" annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers.

In the .htaccess file in sub folder /uk/ insert: DefaultLanguage en-UK and it should show HTTP header Content-Language: en-UK.