: Location-Based redirection and duplication in sub-directories affecting SEO I currently own the website www.xyz.com. The website has a sub-directory for each of the 3 target countries: .../en-US/

@BetL925

In answer to your last question, Google does say


Websites that provide content for different regions and in different
languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar
but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as
long as the content is for different users in different countries.
While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each
different group of users, we understand that this may not always be
possible.
support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192

So in this case you need to implement 'rel-alternate-hreflang' to tell Google that you have similar content in the same language but it's for a different country.

rel-alternate-hreflang

Quick example:

So as you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, you have specific URLs for Spanish speakers in Mexico (es-mx), Dominican Republic (es-do), but want English speakers from The United States to see your US English (en-us) page, and for your auto-redirecting homepage, you should add an annotation for the hreflang value "x-default" as well. In this case you can annotate this cluster of pages using a Sitemap file or using HTML link tags like this:

<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://www.xyz.com/es-DO/” hreflang=”es-do” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://www.xyz.com/es-MX/” hreflang=”es-mx” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://www.xyz.com/en-US/” hreflang=”en-us” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://www.xyz.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />

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