Canonical Tags on Parameter Pages With Hreflang

[TeespringMoz]

Hey Everyone:

We are currently implementing hreflang tags on our site, and we have many parameter pages with hreflang tags; however, I am afraid these may be counted as duplicate content without canonical tags.

example.com/utm_source=tpi

href='http://example.com/de" hreflang="de" rel="alternate"

href='http://example.com/nl" hreflang="nl" rel="alternate"

href='http://example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" rel="alternate"

href='http://example.com/it" hreflang="it" rel="alternate"

I have two questions

1. Do I need a canonical tag pointing to example.com ?

2. On the homepage without the parameter, should I add self referencing hreflang tags? (href="http://example.com/" hreflang="es"

Thanks so much for your help!

Kyle

[TeespringMoz]

Hi Ryan. Thanks for your response.

I understand that the translated pages don't need canonical tags, but I am wondering that since the parameter pages may cause duplicate content, should I add a canonical tag pointing to the non-parameter page?

Also, I have heard conflicting views on whether or not the pages need a self referencing hreflang tag.

Thanks!

Kyle

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Kyle. There was recently a discussion on Canonical + Hreflang here: http://moz.com/community/q/hreflang-canonical-inquiry-for-website-with-29-different-languages. The basic takeaway is that, "Fully done translations are considered canonical within their own languages, so no need to point to the www version as canonical."  Gianluca further expands on this saying, "Instead, you should use the www. URL as canonical if the geotargeted country and the www. share the same language (i.e.: US, Canada, Australia, UK... that all are in English). In that case yes that would be the correct solution for avoiding the duplicated content issue."  Cheers!