Multilingual -> ahref lang, canonical and duplicated title content
-
Hi all!
We have our site eurasmus.com where we are implementing the multilingual.
We have already available english and spanish and we use basically href lang to control different areas.First question:
When a page is not translated but still is visible in both langauges under /en and /es is it enough with the hreflang or should we
add a canonical as well? Nowadays we are apply href lang and only canonicals to the one which are duplicated
in the same language.Second question:
When some pages are not translated, like http://eurasmus.com/en/info/find-intern-placement-austria and http://eurasmus.com/es/info/find-intern-placement-austria,
we are setting up the href lang but still moz detects title and meta duplicated (not duplicate page content).
What do you suggest we should do?Let me know and thank you before hand for your help!
-
What I know is that since almost one year Google is able to deal with duplicated content in a multilingual or multicountry environment if the hreflang is well implemented.
Moreover... if you were using the rel="canonical", you were practically quitting to your Spanish home page (in this specific case) any possibility to even being present in the index, because you would be telling Google:
"Don't consider this URL, but just the canonical one".
This is one of the reasons why Google quit all mention of the rel="canonical" in the hreflang help pages.
-
I am not so sure about using canonical, even if this case is multilingual and not multicountry.
Maybe this is due to the well-known inability Google has to communicate correctly, but in this case it is quite clear with its example:
Some example scenarios where rel="alternate" hreflang="x" is recommended:
You keep the main content in a single language and translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content like a forums typically do this.
This scenario is the one described in this Q&A, so I personally would not suggest canonicalization but yes using hreflang, and - obviously - my main priority would be telling to localize all the content of the page, also because without a complete translation the opportunities to rank in Google.es are substantially zero.
-
I confirm that the moz crawler does not detect or consider the hreflang (in fact no tabs or advice in the moz analytics is dedicated to it).
The only tools that consider it by default (and that I know) are deepcrawl and onpage.org
-
They are not great at writing their own explanations for international. What they meant above is if you have geo-targeted correctly, you would not have to use a canonical between two pages that are the same. That they will figure it out on their own.
You aren't geo-targeting, so I still think the canonical would be needed.
-
Hi there Kate!
Thanks for your time. That is what logic tells me.
But "God" google says, confusing me:
Specifying language and location
We've expanded our support of the rel="alternate" hreflang link element to handle content that is translated or provided for multiple geographic regions. The hreflang attribute can specify the language, optionally the country, and URLs of equivalent content. By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. Alternative URLs can be on the same site or on another domain.
Annotating pages as substantially similar content
Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are targeted at multiple countries, you may use the rel="canonical" link element to specify your preferred version. We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Update: to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using rel=canonical.So I guess canonical is no longer needed?
-
HREFLANG is all you need to note the change in language between two pages. However, if the page has not been translated and is available under both language subfolders, make sure there isn't an HREFLANG and has a canonical. When the pages are identical and have 2 URLs, us a canonical and NOT HREFLANG.
I am not sure if Moz detects HREFLANG. If you know it's set up correctly, just ignore the warnings in Moz. And if you can, translate the title and description as well. That'll help get rid of the warnings.
-
Geo-tagging is not necessary if the content is just translated.
-
Did you assign the geography in webmastertools? This is advised and should already prevent some of the problems might they arise ( i think it should be OK)
Using a canonical is always a good way of harnessing the link value to one specific version.
You could test if a problem is there by running your englisch keywords against the local version of Google.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Duplicate content
Hello mozzers, I have an unusual question. I've created a page that I am fully aware that it is near 100% duplicate content. It quotes the law, so it's not changeable. The page is very linkable in my niche. Is there a way I can build quality links to it that benefit my overall websites DA (i'm not bothered about the linkable page being ranked) without risking panda/dupe content issues? Thanks, Peter
Technical SEO | | peterm21 -
Why do I get duplicate page title errors.
I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page. How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Titles
A few weeks ago my error count went up for Duplicate Page Content and Titles. 4 errors in all. A week later the errors were gone... But now they are back. I made changes to the Webconfig over a month ago but nothing since. SEOmoz is telling me the duplicate content is this http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ and http://www.antiquebanknotes.com Thanks for any advise! This is the relevant web.config. <rewrite><rules><rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www.antiquebanknotes.com$" negate="true"></add></conditions>
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
<action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" www.antiquebanknotes.com="" {r:1"="">http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/{R:1}" />
</action></match></rule>
<rule name="Default Page" enabled="true" stopprocessing="true"><match url="^default.aspx$"><conditions logicalgrouping="MatchAll"><add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="GET"></add></conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="/"></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite>0 -
Help removing duplicate content from the index?
Last week, after a significant drop in traffic, I noticed a subdomain in the index with duplicate content. The main site and subdomain can be found below. http://mobile17.com http://232315.mobile17.com/ I've 301'd everything on the subdomain to the appropriate location on the main site. Problem is, site: searches show me that if the subdomain content is being deindexed, it's happening really slowly. Traffic is still down about 50% in the last week or so... what's the best way to tackle this issue moving forward?
Technical SEO | | ccorlando0 -
Are recipes excluded from duplicate content?
Does anyone know how recipes are treated by search engines? For example, I know press releases are expected to have lots of duplicates out there so they aren't penalized. Does anyone know if recipes are treated the same way. For example, if you Google "three cheese beef pasta shells" you get the first two results with identical content.
Technical SEO | | RiseSEO0 -
WordPress Duplicate Content Issues
Everyone knows that WordPress has some duplicate content issues with tags, archive pages, category pages etc... My question is, how do you handle these issues? Is the smart strategy to use robots meta and add no follow/ no index category pages, archive pages tag pages etc? By doing this are you missing out on the additional internal links to your important pages from you category pages and tag pages? I hope this makes sense. Regards, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0