Setting up a US Online Store - SEO Question

[WhiskyFive]

Hi,

We have a UK site here:
www.paiskincare.com

Currently we get around 50% of our traffic from the US so we plan to put up a US version of the site at: usa.paiskincare.com.

But...how do we get around the duplicate content rule from Google when 99% of the content will be the same - same product descriptions etc.

I'm worried that if someone in the UK searches in Google they are likely to be sent to the US store or if in the US, to the UK, because only one instance of a particular page is included in google's index.

We had this problem on an old store with an Ireland and US version and in the end had to put up "no-follow" links throughout so only the UK version was indexed.

Thanks in advance!

[mayo23]

One option would be to create 2 sub-domains (us.domain.com and uk.domain.com), which would keep all the content within a single domain. I'm sure this would get over the duplicate content issue.

You could then use a geographic ip locator to identify where the visitor originates from and then redirect them to the correct sub-domain.

[AndyP]

Out of interest, if you are selling the same products on both sites.....why have two sites? Why not have one site that sells worldwide (or wherever you wish to sell given that there will undoubtedly be exclusions)? You can have one site offering multiple currencies etc.... and its certainly saves you from doubling up on site admin!

[awebapart.com]

Currently we get around 50% of our traffic from the US so we plan to put up a US version of the site at: usa.paiskincare.com.
If your one site is doing well in attracting visitors from both the UK and US, I would also be reluctant to change it. Is the main reason you want to change it because you want to offer different pricing currencies and different shipping costs? A good ecommerce system should be able to cope with that within the one system, with a currency selector and zone based shipping rates.

[WhiskyFive]

Hi,

The reason we need two sites is that we're about to get stocked in around 50 stores in the US.

However, we can't sell at the UK price because the cost of shipping is prohibitive to the stores (£40-60 per store per shipment). The product is "fresh" with a limited shelf life, so they can't order enough for 3-6 months, but need to order once or even twice a month - many of our UK accounts order weekly.

To get round this we are increasing the RRP in the US and using the weakness of sterling and lack of VAT to heavily subsidise shipping and pay for US marketing and in-store sales support.

But the bottom line is that we promised the US stores that we would match the US RRP on the website which we can only do with a separate store priced in USD and turning off delivery to North America from the UK. We can't have a website that undercuts our US retailers by around 40%.

The other reason is that while UK visitors convert at an average rate of 6%, the conversion rate for US customers is bumping around 1% and we feel that a dedicated US store should help us push that up a fair bit.

I liked the auto-geolocate idea - I had been looking around for something like that. We have one already on the old (soon to be replaced) site that automatically shows prices and delivery in USD if it detects the customer is from the US, so we could build something similar.

Just on the admin comment for multiple stores - the new site uses a single backend to manage multiple sites on multiple domains, so from an admin perspective there isn't any downside to operating multiple stores.

[AndyP]

Ahah...that all makes sense now.... now what was the original question? :) Only kidding.... there are probably others that will have a more qualified view than me on that...so I will watch this thread with interest to see what is said.

[awebapart.com]

We can't have a website that undercuts our US retailers by around 40%.
When you have the one ecommerce shop which displays multiple currencies, you are in control of the currency exchange rate that your shop uses to display prices. You don't have to use the standard exchange rate, you could use an exchange rate which is the standard GBP to USD rate plus the required US percentage markup.

This might be a moot point, since once you put the US prices up on your site, your online sales from the US might stop.

[WhiskyFive]

We could...but then we'd lose control of pricing each product for the US market as it would always be the same multiple of the net UK price - we wouldn't be able to sell at the same RRP's we've set-up for the US stores.