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 hreflang tags still work when the Alternate URL is 301 redirecting to a translated URL in Japanese Characters?
-
My organization has several international sites 4 of them of which have translated URLs in either Japanese, Traditional Chinese, German & Canadian French.
The hreflang tags we have set up on our United States look something like this:
But when you actually go to http://www.domain.co.jp/it-security/ you are 301 redirected to the translated URL version:
www.domain.co.jp/it-セキュリティ/
My question is, will Google still understand that the translated URL is the Alternate URL, or will this present errors?The hreflang tags are automated for each of our pages and would technically be hard to populate the hreflang with the translated URL version. However we could potentially make the hreflang something customized on a page level basis.
-
Hi there,
You should add in the hreflang annotation the final URL showing the content, not one that is just 301 redirecting to another. Are you seeing errors in the Google Search Console "International Targeting" report? If you see "no return tags" errors there for Japan, then means Google is not being able to identify them.
Thanks!
-
Redirects should be avoided. If the Japanese translation of your page is located at www.domain.co.jp/it-セキュリティ/ then please don't use www.domain.co.jp/it-security/ in your hreflang tag.
If it's hard to specify the correct URL in your page HTML, try providing Hreflang info in sitemaps instead.
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
-
Should we include URLs with parameters in the sitemap?
Hi, I wanted to know whether we can include URLs with search parameters in the sitemap. Currently, we are trying to append structured data for our job listing page. There happens to be a large number of job listings around 1000 pages with unique job-id and location. Should we add these pages in the sitemap or is there any other solution to this? Regards, Tejas
Algorithm Updates | | tejasbansode0 -
Can 'Jump link'/'Anchor tag' urls rank in Google for keywords?
E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?
Algorithm Updates | | rwat0 -
301 redirect to URL plus anchor tag???
Hi - my company has just had a site redesign completed, and our "old" site we have landing pages for a full product line. The new design has taken the content from those landing pages and placed them into one long scrolling page. We currently rank well on the "old" landing pages but now all that content is contained in a single page with anchor tags throughout attached to the headings. Can you set up 301's to anchor tags? Example: old site www.mysite.com/products/automotive/auto-parts.html new site: www.mysite.com/products/automotive#auto-parts
Algorithm Updates | | Jenny10 -
Is it a good idea to 301 redirect one same niche site towards another site for seo benefit
Hello friends, I have 2 android niche sites, one site is running on a technology dropped domain i catch 1 year ago it has, almost 400+ domains linking to different parts of the site, the other one i established from scratch and both are running from jan 2015. Now i want to redirect first site which already has 400 links pointing towards it to the home page of my 2nd android site. Is it a good idea to do so and does it give any boost in terms of seo?
Algorithm Updates | | RizwanAkbar0 -
Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?
Hi Moz, I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com. Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com? I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order. What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
I thought META KEYWORDS tag was dead?
http://www.wpkube.com/wordpress-seo-plugin/ this article just came out as a one of the many guides to Yoast's Wordpress SEO. I am surprised it mentioned: Use meta keywords tag: Google reportedly doesn’t use the keywords that your enter for your posts but as Google isn’t the only show in town, you might want to check this box.Recommendation: check I stopped using meta keywords tag because Google doesn't use it any more, plus if you are in a competitive field by using keywords you are giving free keyword research to your competitors? Does any one still use meta keywords here? If so why? Google doesn't use keyword tags, has anyone experienced a dis-benefit to meta-keywords tag from Google ie. dropped rankings etc.?
Algorithm Updates | | vmialik2 -
301-Redirects, PageRank, Matt Cutts, Eric Enge & Barry Schwartz - Fact or Myth?
I've been trying to wrap my head around this for the last hour or so and thought it might make a good discussion. There's been a ton about this in the Q & A here, Eric Enge's interview with Matt Cutts from 2010 (http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml) said one thing and Barry Schwartz seemed to say another: http://searchengineland.com/google-pagerank-dilution-through-a-301-redirect-is-a-myth-149656 Is this all just semantics? Are all of these people really saying the same thing and have they been saying the same thing ever since 2010? Cyrus Shepherd shed a little light on things in this post when he said that it seemed people were confusing links and 301-redirects and viewing them as being the same things, when they really aren't. He wrote "here's a huge difference between redirecting a page and linking to a page." I think he is the only writer who is getting down to the heart of the matter. But I'm still in a fog. In this video from April, 2011, Matt Cutts states very clearly that "There is a little bit of pagerank that doesn't pass through a 301-redirect." continuing on to say that if this wasn't the case, then there would be a temptation to 301-redirect from one page to another instead of just linking. VIDEO - http://youtu.be/zW5UL3lzBOA So it seems to me, it is not a myth that 301-redirects result in loss of pagerank. In this video from February 2013, Matt Cutts states that "The amount of pagerank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of pagerank that dissipates through a link." VIDEO - http://youtu.be/Filv4pP-1nw Again, Matt Cutts is clearly stating that yes, a 301-redirect dissipates pagerank. Now for the "myth" part. Apparently the "myth" was about how much pagerank dissipates via a 301-redirect versus a link. Here's where my head starts to hurt: Does this mean that when Page A links to Page B it looks like this: A -----> ( reduces pagerank by about 15%)-------> B (inherits about 85% of Page A's pagerank if no other links are on the page But say the "link" that exists on Page A is no longer good, but it's still the original URL, which, when clicked, now redirects to Page B via a URL rewrite (301 redirect)....based on what Matt Cutts said, does the pagerank scenario now look like this: A (with an old URL to Page B) ----- ( reduces pagerank by about 15%) -------> URL rewrite (301 redirect) - Reduces pagerank by another 15% --------> B (inherits about 72% of Page A's pagerank if no other links are on the page) Forgive me, I'm not a mathematician, so not sure if that 72% is right? It seems to me, from what Matt is saying, the only way to avoid this scenario would be to make sure that Page A was updated with the new URL, thereby avoiding the 301 rewrite? I recently had to re-write 18 product page URLs on a site and do 301 redirects. This was brought about by our hosting company initiating rules in the back end that broke all of our custom URLs. The redirects were to exactly the same product pages (so, highly relevant). PageRank tanked on all 18 of them, hard. Perhaps this is why I am diving into this question more deeply. I am really interested to hear your point of view
Algorithm Updates | | danatanseo0