Multistore Magento SEO

[Architect]

Hello, 

I got Magento ecommerce site with domain name .co.uk. 

As company is expanding to the USA, Canada and other English speaking countries, we are planning to open multiple magento stores with domain names .ca, .com  and etc.

The content in the multiple stores will be the same with slight changes (currency and measures).

Would if affect SEO? As I have read that Google can impose "penalty".

What could be the best solution in such situation?

Many thanks!

[carlosrob4]

No it will not attract Google penalty, Here is what matt cutts says about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

You will need to use hreflang tag to show the right TLD to the visitors as well remove the chances of duplicate content penalty completely. Here is the complete guide to hreflang

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

[Amasty]

Hi @Architect

Hreflang is a good solution for international sites. It can either be set in the pages cods or via xml sitemaps.

Here is also a link to a great guide on this - http://www.semrush.com/blog/ultimate-hreflang-guide-dummies/

As for magento, you can use GeoIP redirect extension to switch between your sire versions depending on the contry people come from - https://amasty.com/magento-geoip-redirect.html

Hope that helps!

[Architect]

Thanks a lot for your valuable advice! I think it is the right solution. I have been trying learn more how it works.

For CMS pages adding href should be fine as they will have different URLs, but products and categories will have the same global link, although content is slightly different. Do you have any suggestions how could I add href in such case? Thanks a lot!