Href lang and multilingual question
-
Greetings Moz-Hive mind! I'm hoping you can help me on the internationalisation conundrum below;
We currently have a website with three distinct 'locales' US, SEA and UK we automatically redirect customers using IP recognition to a locale which matches, we also determine their currency based on IP. The issue we currently have is a lot of duplicate content and no use of href lang or rel=canonical tags etc...
My proposed structure would be to create a locale based directory for the three locales we offer.
- / - being US and most other Worldwide
- /uk - being UK
- /as - being Hong Kong and other Asian territories.
How would you suggest we set up the href lang tags for these? Because technically there are going to be multiple language possibilities within. Our main customers are English only if this helps.
Also as a secondary question, how should I set up the Google Search Console settings for each of these directories?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Thank you so very much!
-
Correct.
About using the hreflang="x-default" or the hreflang="en", that depends if you are interested in targeting also users not searching in English.
If not, you can go for the hreflang="en" option.
-
OK that makes sense. So let me get this straight;
1. USA/Worldwide version - /
- hreflang="en" (Can I use "x-default" here instead?)
- no targeting within Search Console
2. SEA version - /as/
- hreflang="en-HK" (repeat for all SEA territories)
- no targeting within Search Console
3. UK version - /uk/
- hreflang="en-GB"
- targeting United Kingdom on Search Console- use a selector pop up using IP sniffing to detect if the customer is viewing the wrong version of the page/site.
-
A solution could be implementing an alert system (Amazon style), so that people with those characteristics visiting the website and having eventually landed on it (but on / and /uk/ URLs) albeit they are located in HK or other EAS country, they are alerted that the best version of the site for them is the /as/ one.
You can do it via IP detection. Don't do automatic redirection, though.
-
Just to let you know, none of the above has been implemented yet, I am still planning the best course of action.
The majority of our clients browsing from Hong Kong have their language set to "en-US" and "en-GB". Is there a way to target these users without showing them the USA version of the site?
The USA version of the site needs to be the global one because the majority of our clients are based there.
Would you be willing to take this conversation offline into email? I would very much appreciate the help.
-
Mmm... question: do those users visiting the site from Hong Kong or from USA and/or GB?
Because if that is the situation, then you should check out if you have:
- Well implemented the hreflang;
- If you have geo-targeted the /uk/ subfolder to Great Britain/United Kingdom in Search Console.
Said that, following the logic I presented in my first answer, the hreflang="en" should suggest only "/" "(USA) URLs, because you told me that you want the USA version of your site to be also the "Global" one.
If it so, then the "/as/" cannot be paired to the hreflang="en" annotation, because you will have two identical hreflang (hreflang="en") suggesting two different URLs, and that would be wrong and confusing Google so much that it can ignore all the hreflang you may have implemented.
However, in the "home page" of the /as/ subfolder, you should have these hreflang annotations:
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-HK" href="http://www.domain.com/as/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AU" href="http://www.domain.com/as/"></rel="alternate">
- REPEAT IT SO TO COVER ALL EAS COUNTRIES
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="http://www.domain.com/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="http://www.domain.com/uk/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.domain.com/"></rel="alternate">
-
Thanks for your detailed response Gianluca! Very helpful.
One question, am I also able to include hreflang="en" under the /as/ subfolder? Looking at Analytics and 80% of our Hong Kong clients are browsing in either en-US or en-GB (complicated).
-
Your situation is a tricky one, because the SEA area is not a country, and therefore cannot be geo-targeted via Search Console.
To use the hreflang in order to suggest Google to show the /as/ subfolder is possible, though. Simply, you have to implement as many hreflang="en-[Code of the Country] as many are the countries included in the SEA area.
Then, in order to have the USA version being the global one:
-
You should not geo-target it toward USA in Search Console;
-
You should use the hreflang="en" and not the hreflang="en-US" (that will target only users from USA).
-
As an option, you can
-
set up the hreflang="en-US" to suggest google to show / to people using English in the USA;
-
set up the hreflang="x-default" to suggest google to show / to everybody (using English or not), who are not geo-targeted by other hreflang annotations.
Obviously, for UK, you must use the hreflang="en-GB".
-
-
Hey Dmitrii, sorry I should have mentioned in the question I understand how href lang works. I am more asking for the best practice implementation when the language might possibly vary? With US and Worldwide and the Hong Kong and Asian territories.
-
Hi there.
Well, you setup hreflang very normally - on each of those language based pages specify rel="alternate" hreflang="whatever" href="matching url".Refer to this video from Google, they explain pretty good what's what and when to use which version: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
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
-
XML Sitemap Question!
Hi All, I know that the sitemaps.xml URL must be findable but what about the sitemaps/pageinstructions.xml URL? Can we safely noindex the sitemaps/pageinstructions.xml URL? Thanks! Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
Redirecting M Dot Mobile Website to Responsive Design Website Questions
Hi amazing Moz community 🙂 Couldn't find this question anywhere, and knew this was the place to ask! We are helping a client redirect an M Dot website to a Responsive Design website. We want to retain our mobile rankings for keywords. Three questions - We should use 301 redirects from the M Dot website to the new website correct? (not 302s?) How long does it take for Google to understand that we have launched a responsive website? Can we remove the 301 redirects after a few days (if the M Dot website interferes/breaks the new Responsive website)? We have verified an account on Google Search Console for the M Dot website, along with a mobile sitemap that has been submitted and verified. What should we do with this M Dot GSC account? Just delete it? Or keep it and upload the NEW XML Sitemap with the new WWW links (because the website is responsive). THANK YOU!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Few question about SEO
HI guys, I have few questions and I always find good answer here. I tried many SEO companies some very expensive and well known some with medium prices and some from India. I’m not an SEO expert but I always get the same things from SEO companies. They're saying you have to stay with us for few months before you’ll see any results. I completely understand however I don’t see the result on the end.1. What exactly Do I need SEO company for, after I do on page optimisation if they don’t work on proper backlinks. Just letting you know I’m getting content from other people.2. Is there something else which is really important after your page is optimised than backlinks? Or we should fully focus on get backlinks from customers, guest post, sharing on social media etc. to increase our DA and PA?3. Any advice about some individual or company who is good in backlink services?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lukas-ST
Thank youLukasThanks a lot.Lukas0 -
Wrong Website Showing Up On Knowledge Graph - Car Dealer SEO Question
Hi Everyone, I have a client who has two website platforms, one of them is mandated by the manufacturer and the other is the one we use and is linked up to our Google Plus/Maps/etc. accounts. The one that is manufacturer mandated is showing up on the Google Knowledge graph and this is not ideal for us. Unfortunately, we cannot get rid of the other site because it is mandated. So how do we go about fixing this issue? I Had a few ideas, and I'd like to know if they would work. If you can think of something that's outside of the box, I'd appreciate it. 1.) Put a rel=canonical across the website 2.) Remove all keywords that might trigger it to show up on the knowledge graph from the URL of the non ideal site 3.) Go for a .net or .us domain. Do these kind of domains have less authority and are less likely to show up in a google search? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
301 v/s 302 Redirection on Homepage (Multilingual)
Hello, Our website: http://www.luxresorts.com currently has a default 302 redirection to http://www.luxresorts.com/en. We would like to do a 301 redirection instead of a 302 to http://www.luxresorts.com. Our concern is that the site is multilingual and we wonder what effect would the 301 redirection have on search engine crawlers and how would this appear on SERP. When a search is done on Google.com, the English version of our website appears and when on Google.FR, the French version appears. Would the 301 redirection change the way our website appear on Google? Grateful if you could help us out in understanding the pros and cons/best practices for our concern. Thanks in advance. Tej Luchmun.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
What Questions to Ask in SEO Interview
Tomorrow morning I have a call with an SEO company interested in doing some work with our company. Its a larger company who do a lot of SEO work, and seem to have good feedback around the place. But we have been very very white hat in our all our our SEO work so far, and some of their wording on their site talks about "Negotiations and acquisitions of link partners".. which gives me the feel they might be a little grey hat.. What are some good questions we should ask these guys to make sure what they are doing is legit, and not going to get us stung for anything? And what sort of work should we get them to do, if we are happy to take care of content creation, on page optimisation and social media activities? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0 -
To subnav or NOT to subnav... that's my question.... :)
We are working on a new website that is golf related and wondering about whether or not we should set up a subnavigation dropdown menu from the main menu. For example: GOLF PACKAGES
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesO
>> 2 Round Packages
>> 3 Round Packages
>> 4 Round Packages
>> 5 Round Packages GOLF COURSES
>> North End Courses
>> Central Courses
>> South End Courses This would actually be very beneficial to our users from a usability standpoint, BUT what about from an SEO standpoint? Is diverting all the link juice to these inner pages from the main site navigation harmful? Should we just create a page for GOLF PACKAGES and break it down on that page?0