John Mueller from Google said that when it comes to having a multinational site, making a specific US folder structure won't give you any practical SEO difference. It might be easier for you to manage or for your to analyze with your analytics and data but from an SEO perspective, it won't matter.
This came up in a Reddit thread where John Mueller wrote, "I don't think you'd see a practical SEO difference between using /blog/ or /en-us/blog/ for your US content."
The question asked was "Do we need localized folders with duplicate content for our home market on our site?:
John responded in full:
IMO the advantage of using /en-us/blog/ instead of /blog/ for US content (on an internation site that uses /LL-CC/anything URL patterns) is that it's easier for you to filter & slice your metrics by country/language. I don't think you'd see a practical SEO difference between using /blog/ or /en-us/blog/ for your US content. /blog/ looks nice, but /en-us/blog/ is also not super-weird.Regarding different country / same language content, that can happen is that we see them as identical and pick a canonical for them, but then use hreflang to show the right URL. It will look confusing in Search Console, but it should work out. In general, I'd avoid using exact duplicate content across hreflang versions because of that (it just makes your life easier).
For example, you might consider having just an English version of informational content, and if there's something country-specific (e.g., products for sale with different availability/currencies), then do those on a per-country basis. Obviously, this is more work, and depending on your site it might not be feasible. Alternatively, like you mentioned, making sure the English versions are localized per country also helps to avoid them being seen as duplicates. In the worst case, if they are considered duplicates, then usually hreflang results in the right URLs being shown in Search, regardless (but Search Console reporting will be on the canonical URL).
So, do what is best for you, which is not shocking, surprising or unexpected information from Google.
Forum discussion at Reddit.
