Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
-
Moz,
Hi Moz,
Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following:
or would I use:
Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance!
-
Just an update for everyone. We use sitemaps, rather than meta tags, to do the circular href lang mapping for our localized domains. In doing so, we've found the HREFLANG XML Sitemap Tool from The Media Flow particularly AMAZING! Talk about saving time! Just make a csv file with a comma for each language/locale, upload it, and then download a zip file with all your sitemaps. Beautiful.
-
Hey Kate,
I remember this question as well it's a year old now great catch and they answer. Thumbs up.
Imagine if you tried to target all of different French dialects if you tried to target all of that with one url you would not be able to have the subtle differences between French and Canadian French
just like a US English and Canadian English there are minor details that make a huge difference to Google. Also I'm sure this is been sa just like in US English and Canadian English there are minor details that make a huge difference to Google.
Also I'm sure this is been said however I think it is worthwhile to host your website in the country you're targeting. Canada in this case (This not that it is going to hurt you badly) as long as hosting it's very fast were you going to target. if you do not however there is evidence pointing to the IP still making a large difference after Geo targeting. )
See Richard Baxter's article on using a UK IP versus US IP on the exact same hosting company and getting a pretty large difference in results based on the IP address after Geo targeting.
https://builtvisible.com/ip-location-search-results/
What's interesting is WPE (the host) was using a proxy so hosting was still out of the UK Data center but was assigned or US IP addres.
I hope that helps and agree 100% with what Kate said. She really knows her stuff.
Tom
-
Oh wow. Missed this somehow. I remember answering but the answer isn't here. Weird.
Short answer, this markup would be confusing to a bot. You are telling Google that /fr has multiple regional translations. Which isn't true. If you have one French translation that isn't regionally focused, you need one hreflang tag for that page.
If you are trying to geo-target a specific country, you need to actually make content for that country you are targeting. If you don't have the resources for that, just offer your content in french without geo-targeting and it should rank just fine if it's relevant and strong.
-
I have this same question Justin. Did you find that this is an acceptable setup for hreflang?
-
That's another question that has nothing to do with hreflang usage but about the best International SEO targeting to follow in your case and that will depend a lot on your business and capacity. I wrote about it here: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-international-seo/ if you still have questions you might want to open a new thread specifically asking about that topic.
-
Thank you Aleyda!
Do you know which type of targeting has more impact ... language or country?
I don't know that we need country targeting because we don't display currency or sell offline in physical locations. Also, I doubt we would create multiple French sites ... even if we do want to target France specifically.
-
Hi Justin,
If you're targeting French as "language" and not as country, and you only have one French site version for all your french speaking users then you don't need to add the specific country, just the language to the hreflang
It's much simpler!
------> English to the US. If you don't only target the US with it but any English speakers worldwide, then remove the US to become:
The same with the French one:
Like that you only need to add these two tags in your English and French (language targeted) URLs
The issue is that you were mixing language and country targeting which are two different things.
I hope this helps!
-
Kate,
What if I have one url translated into French but want to target French speakers in multiple countries? Would I do this with my hreflang tags:
Note: I generated these with Aleyda Solis's international sitemap generator. Does hreflang="x-default" ever get used?
-
Hi!
Your friendly international SEO here. (PS thanks for the call out there Tom)
You cannot point two HREFLANG tags at the same URL because it's impossible to have both languages on the same page. Well, not impossible, just not recommended. I am not sure if you have translations or not, so both possible answers are below.
Translations (FR and EN) Available
If you have a Canadian subsite and it has two translations, you need to use both geo-targeting and HREFLANG. In your case, the /ca would be geotargeted, but then you need to distinguish the two translations somehow. If /ca is how you are geo-targeting, I recommend parameter for translation. So the French translation of the Canadian homepage content would be http://www.domain.com/ca?lang=fr -- for English of the same Canadian homepage content, it would be http://www.domain.com/ca?lang=en.The canonical set up in that instance is:
Page: http://www.domain.com/ca?lang=fr
Page: http://www.domain.com/ca?lang=en
Note that the HREFLANG tags are the same because you have to reference the current page and all translations of that page.
Translations NOT Available
Now, this answer assumes that you just have the Canadian content in English, or just in French. If that is true, you don't need the HREFLANG. You just need to geo-target the subsite for Canada.Now I do recommend that you offer translated content for the Canadian audience, but please don't auto-translate content. Just offer it in one language until you can get the resources to have it translated by a real person.
Hope that helps!
-
Because you are in the country you wish to target already you could geo-target the domain to Canada and simply use the language but the using set up below would work. You may also want to read this by KATE MORRIS - http://www.stateofdigital.com/use-hreflang/.
You could check the above using http://www.impersonal.me/ and http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool.
Hope this Helps,
Tom
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
-
Is it worth maintaining multiple international websites
Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US. The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand. The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain. What would you advise? Thanks.
International SEO | | fdl4712_aol.com2 -
Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API
We have a site currently in development that is using the Google Translate API and I am having a massive issue getting screaming frog to crawl and all of our non-native English speaking employees have read through the translated copy in their native language and the general consensus is it reads at a 5th grade level at best. My questions to the community is, has anyone implemented this API on a site and has it a) helped with gaining traffic from other languages/countires and b) has it hurt there site from an SEO standpoint.
International SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
How can I restrict the domains country by country?
Hello, I have Two Domains one is xyz.co.uk and other is xyz.com Now, my main target for .com is United States, and I don't want to open that .com domain in any other country especially India. The same with the .co.uk, I dont want to open .co.uk in other countries. I did it with some developer help but it gave me redirected error in Google Webmaster. Can anyone please guide me how I can do this the proper way ? And Other issues is, how can I implement ,if any user in United States open xyz.co.uk than he should redirect to the .com version. Thank you.
International SEO | | AmitTulsiyani0 -
HELP: Incorrect Meta Tag description showing for the wrong search results
Hi Guys I'm stuck here! I have update the hreftags, updated the sitemaps. I have 3 top level domains and my zenory.com site is showing for the home page the wrong meta tag description, as you can see in the attachement the meta tag is showing the new zealand site meta tag description which is for zenory.co.nz Anyone know what might be going on here? I have also fetched the home page through WMT as well and its still returning the same results any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Local SEO in Canada
I am trying to do some local optimization for some clients in Canada and it got me thinking, are there different best practices and different sites I want to use when working in Canada?
International SEO | | rbrianforrester0 -
SEO Company in Asia
Hi All. I have a client looking to expand their industrial services to southeast Asia (Vietnam and Indonesia specifically right now). Does anyone know of an SEO/Online Marketing firm local to that region that may be able to help them network with businesses and industries there? I've gone through the SEOmoz member database and reached out to a couple people with agencies in that area but never heard back from them. I personally thought a local firm would be more beneficial to the client but I'm also open to suggestions on ways that we might be able to help them market their services online from the US. Thanks so much! Megan
International SEO | | ILM_Marketing0 -
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site
OK, 2 primary questions for a multilingual site. This specific site has 2 language so I'll use that for the examples. 1 - Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag Necessary? The first is regarding the correct implementation of hreflang, and whether or not I should have a self-referencing hreflang tag. In other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), I am uncertain whether the source code should contain the second line below: Obviously the Spanish version should reference the English version, but does it need to reference itself? I have seen both versions implemented, with seemingly good results, but I want to know the best practice if it exists. 2 - Canonical of Current Language or Default Language? The second questions is regarding which canonical to use on the secondary language pages. I am aware of the update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines recently that state not to use canonical, but they say not to do it because everyone was messing it up, not because it shouldn't be done. So, in other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), which of the two following canonicals is correct? OR For this question, you can assume that (A) the English version of the site is our default and (B) the content is identical. Thanks guys, feel free to ask any qualifiers you think are relevant.
International SEO | | KaneJamison1 -
Pop-up to select country. Any negative SEO effect?
Hi there! We have similar websites in different countries (it's an ecommerce site). Some times, those websites share the same language and, for example, people from Mexico end up in a page from our website in Argentina. Therefore they see our products in their language buy in a foreign currency. We would like to show them a pop-up (like a shadowbox) depending on their IP to allow them to go to their local website. There wouldn't be any redirect. Would that affect our rankings in any way? Would Googlebots see that as well? Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0