Duplicate content question: How to avoid duplicate content issues?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Brad Sacks: Duplicate content question: How different does a website's content on a landing page (and product pages) for .com and .ca have to be in order to avoid duplicate content issues? We own both .com and .ca and are trying to launch .ca without any problems.
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  Dave Elliott: I tend to use ;http://www.copyscape.com/compare.php to check for things like this. I'm not sure how different they need to be, but this gives you a a few insights.
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  Andy Wigglesworth: I tend to use http://www.copyscape.com/compare.php to check for things like this. I'm not sure how different they need to be, but this gives you a a few insights.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **chuckles to himself quietly in the corner**
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  John Coleman: Try setting the geo targeting in webmaster tools for each location. it can help google understand your sites are for two different markets. ;
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  Brad Sacks: So +John Coleman, if I do not change the content at all, and geotarget .com to the US and .ca to Canada in GWT I should not run into duplicate content issues? Can anyone else confirm that?
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  Shawn Cohen: I'm unsure about the GWT option but I would use hreflang to differentiate the content for Google so that you can display the same exact content w/o having to change it at all. Here's a good article on implementing hreflang tags: ;http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/case-study-the-impact-of-hreflang-tag
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  John Coleman: +Brad Sacks ;you would be safest using a model like this .com/en-us .com/en-ca and then setting in GWTs. it could possibly be too much work depending on how your site is set up. But doing it that way allows you to geo the sites to different markets telling search engines that content on site A is for market A and content on Site B is for market B.  ;many big sites use this method. example. goal.com
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  Rahul Gemawath: Easy way to solve is use to canonical tag. 
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  Gerk Mulder: Best way is to use the hrefang rel=alternate header code to define the specific language and country of your business' websites. That way Google understands that the content is the same but targetted at another location. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
  
  A canonical would only keep one tld from being indexed
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  Rahul Gemawath: +Gerk Mulder: agreed. 
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  Jim Munro: A penalty has been applied to +Andy Wigglesworth ;for inserting duplicate content into the second comment. Now I guess we'll lose the number one position for "dumb seo questions community on google+"  ;:)
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  Dave Elliott: Probably be top of the serps for crap seo jokes though. 
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  Andy Wigglesworth: lol, yeah, I've tarred and feathered myself...
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  Shubhashish Shukla: Just use rel='canonical' meta tag. This will tell the search engines that there are possible duplicate pages, but the real one is here.
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  Gerk Mulder: +Shubhashish Shukla ;with the canonical one of the TLD's would not get indexed for the targeted country so what would be the point of having an extra TLD for another region. Canonical in this case is not the proper solution. ;
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  John Coleman: +Gerk Mulder ;So do you think something like my previous suggestions could work?
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  Shawn Cohen: +John Coleman ;w/ hreflang, he could keep the .com and the .ca and not have to worry about dupe content at all as long as the tags were placed properly on the referring site.
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  John Coleman: +Shawn Cohen ;just saw the the link to the article you mentioned in your last post. v good detail. I think it would be the safest option here but I would also verify both in GWTs and set the geotargeting to be double safe.