Hreflang tags with link to redirect loop

[DanielKiely6]

Hi guys,

I'm having a bit of an issue on a client site that I'm hoping someone can help me with. Basically, the client has two domains, one serving users in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com), showing Euro prices, and the other serving users in Northern Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/) showing £ prices.

The issue I'm having is that the URL for the Northern Ireland page has a 302 on it and goes through another 2/3 301 redirects until it resolves as http://www.americanholidays.com, however it does then show the £ prices. You can see the redirect chain here: http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&useragent=1&typeProtocol=11

The homepage is using the Hreflang tag, and pointing search engines to serve the http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ page to users using EN-GB as their language. The page is also using a self-referencing canonical, which I believe may negate the whole Hreflang tag anyway?

My main question is - is the fact that the Hreflang for the gb_en page is pointing to a chain of redirects negatively affecting it? (I understand too many redirects are never good). Also, is the canonical negating the Hreflang?

Any help/info would be great as I just can't get my head around it!

Thanks guys

Daniel

[DanielKiely6]

Hi Aleyda,

Thanks so much for your in-depth answer! You have confirmed what I suspected is the case.

I've been working with dev to try and get this issue fixed, and hopefully it will be soon!

Thank you again.

Daniel

[Aleyda]

Hi there,

The hreflang annotation along the canonical tags are correctly implemented on the page, the issue you have is regarding the redirects... and it's a big issue since your UK page is not even indexed because of it.

So, to clarify, this is the logic that you should follow with hreflang annotations across canonicals, your configuration says:

When on www.americanholidays.com:

With rel="canonical" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that the original version is itself, which is ok. 
With rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ie" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that this page is targeted to English speakers in the Republic of Ireland. 
With rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that this is the alternative version of the page targeted to English speakers in the UK.

This is all ok! It should be the other way around for the UK version... when on http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ it should be:

With <link <span class="html-tag">rel</link <span>="canonical" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that the original version is itself, which is ok. 
With <link < span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ie" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that this page is the alternate targeted to English speakers in the Republic of Ireland. 
With <link <span class="html-tag">rel</link <span>="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that this is the page targeted to English speakers in the UK. </link <>

Unfortunately I cannot check what you have in the UK version of the page because of the mix of 302s and 301s redirects that you have towards the Irish version, which are causing that it doesn't even get indexed on Google:

https://www.google.es/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&oq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1174j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8

Eliminate the redirects -each page should be accessible on its own... and if you want at some point refer Irish users that might end-up going to the UK version or viceversa, what you should do is IP detection and show a little banner recommending that there's a better option for that country but not automatically redirects anywhere-. If you do this and the proper hreflang annotation configuration in all of the pages along with a geotargeting of the /gb_en/ directory in the Google Search Console to the UK (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en) you should have an ok working international Web configuration.

Thanks!