Hreflang vs canonical
-
I'm having an international Drupal website and the hreflang module is in use. However, I'm still not sure how to optimize the pages. Perhaps it's easier to ask with an example
**International: **www.example.com/products/product1
Here we have the master content of the product**US: **www.example.com/us/products/product1
Here we have exactly the same content as international. Nothing is localized.**UK: **www.example.com/uk/products/product1
Here we have almost the same content as on International. Here and there some local terms and extra text.**German: **www.example.com/de/products/product1
Here we have a translated version of the international page.Questions
- Do I add hreflang from all to all pages + to itself?
- Where do I add canonicals?
- How should I optimize the content on the US and UK pages?
-
Answer to the quick question: The reason of having the same content (e.g. solution/product/reference) page, is that the international content can be used for a local (e.g. /us) page as well. Sometimes, it's really needed to localize the content, sometimes the same content as the international one can be used.
1. Good, that's how it's done now.
2. Yes, very good explanation for this question. Thanks Thomas!
3. True. Perhaps we should not look this from an seo point of view but from a market perspective. I got some ideas, thanks
-
Quick question: Is there another reason you have the same content at /us/ as the "international" version? I assume the /us/ subdirectory is geo-targeted to the US in WMT?
-
hreflang should be present for the current pages and all other translated versions.
-
See the note about canonicals and hreflang in the other reply. Canonicals are for use in each specific page instance when you need them.
-
For the US vs UK, you need to research your market. I can't give you the answer to this without tons of research. I recommend researching each country market individually. There are different target keywords, competitors, and backlink profiles to research.
-
-
This is a useful post for you: https://hreflang.org/use-hreflang-canonical-together/
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
-
CcTLD vs subfolder for international SEO
In what situations is subfolder better than ccTLD, and vice versa.
International SEO | | MedicalSEOMarketing1 -
US site vs New Canadian site for Brand
Hi Everyone, My company decided to create a Canadian site for Canadian customers. How do I slowly transition the US site for ranking in Google.ca? I was thinking of using robots.txt to block Google.Ca from crawling the US site? Can anyone provide some advice oh how this should be managed? Thank you!
International SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Hreflang problem?
Hello, We do have a client with a site in multiple versions (one domain per country). French and Spanish versions work really fine, but the problem comes up with the .com and .co.uk versions. This is my hreflang piece of code: When I go to Google.co.uk and search the exact match domain keyword "how much cost an app", I only find the howmuchcostanapp.com domain (1st or 2nd page) instead of howmuchcostanapp.co.uk. The UK one is not appearing! This is very strange. I have spent a lot of time trying to solve this, but I don't know what else to do. Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and help!
International SEO | | Yeeply.com0 -
Is it compulsory to use hreflang attribute for Multilingual site? What if I do not use such tag?
Hello Everybody, My main site - abcd.co.uk and other sites are like this se.abcd.co.uk, fr.abcd.co.uk, es.abcd.co.uk etc Now if I donot use hreflang for Multilingual site then google will consider it as subdomain or duplicate site? But content of the sites are in different language. Thanks!
International SEO | | wright3350 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
Alternate Hreflang Problem
We have two travel websites.
International SEO | | Izzet
One in English language for people living in the UK.
One in Turkish language for people living in Turkey. The major difference is:
English (UK) website shows 4+ nights accomodation prices because UK travellers never come for less than 4 nights.
Turkish website shows 1-night, 2-night, 3-night prices because Turkish travellers never stay for more than 3 nights. We are using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags properly on our two websites. Today, I am disappointed to see Google display the wrong result. When a user in Turkey searches a Turkish keyword on Google.com.tr;
Google is showing the English language website. When I click on Search Settings > Language;
I see that English is selected under this question:
"Which language should Google products use?" This is a big problem for us.
Many rich users in Turkey, who are more willing to buy our services, speak English fluently and they may choose to use Gmail in English. But we are losing business because these Turkish customers don't convert at all on the Enlish (UK) website because of the reason I explained above. 1) What can we do?
2) If we remove the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags now, will it hurt any of the websites?
We have seen an increase in Google rankings for the Turkish language website after using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags. Izzet0 -
What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site. Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page? Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish). Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc... Sitemap example for English website URL:
International SEO | | peteboyd
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url> Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url> Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
Hello, We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website. Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language. These are the languages we target: French – FRANCE French – SWITZERLAND French – BELGIUM Italian – ITALY Italian – SWITZERLAND German – GERMANY German – SWITZERLAND German – AUSTRIA Spanish – SPAIN Spanish – COLOMBIA Spanish – PANAMA Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC Swedish – SWEDEN Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS English – UK English – INTERNATIONAL The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
The questions : Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language? Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all? Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs? Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market? Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place? Looking forward to your feedback. Best wishes, Maëlle0