Multi-region site with different top level domains

Question

I have a website that has both a ".com" and ".com.au" domain. I want the ".com.au" site for Australian users and the ".com" for everyone else.

Is the following hreflang links correct to achieve this?

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://www.website.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AU" href="https://www.website.com.au/" />

I also have a canoncial issue with both sites using the www and non-www versions of the domain. At the moment my canonical link is https://website.com.au. I want to change the to the www version. Is it ok for me to do this as long as I put in a permanent redirect? Will this ruin any SEO or page ranking?

Will this affect analytics, tag manager and webmaster tools?

Answer 1

Yes this is the correct implementation.

You could then have the same content, or very similar content with just regional variations on both sites and you should not fall foul of any duplciate content issues between the sites, because you are signalling to Google these are the same sites, but for different locales.

If you want to switch your preferred domain to include www prefix, then yes setting a redirect from non-www to www prefix is the correct thing to do, and no you should not see any adverse side effects for SEO.

However you must ensure to change all your canonical tags so they then reference the www prefix for all pages:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.website.com.au/" />

You also need to update other instances of URLs to the www prefix, such as in rel=next/prev tag, hreflang tags, schema mark-up, and your internal site linking.

You should also add both versions of the domain to Google Search Console and then you can also indicate in the settings which is your preferred version.