Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues

[Avid_Demand]

Hi,

Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example:

https://www.example.com/es_ES/

https://www.example.com/fr_FR/

https://www.example.com/it_IT/

My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented:

My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example:

User-agent:*

Disallow: /es_ES/

Disallow: /fr_FR/

Disallow: /it_IT/

This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt

What are your thoughts?

Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently?

I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.

So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:

This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation

Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.

The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.

Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:

if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.

[GastonRiera]

that's corect.

[Avid_Demand]

Yes. example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com

So, when referencing that version in hreflang will it look like this?

Is this correct?

[GastonRiera]

So, every page of example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com/ ?

If that's the case, then there is no reason in having that folder (/en-US/), just when configuring Hreflang for en-US use the URL without that folder

[Avid_Demand]

What do you mean by "exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites"?

My https://www.example.com/en-US/ 301 redirects to https://www.example.com

Thoughts?

[GastonRiera]

Yeap, those implementations are correct.

in order to avoid duplicate content between different language/countries websites, in each page that is present on each site, there should be their corresponding hreflang tag.

In your case:
And for a sample page: https://www.smarttechMKT.com/es-ES/gastonriera-espanol

NOTE, in the case that site.com and site.com/en-us/ are exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites. Just the one without the folder and hreflang tag with en-US should point to that
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR

[Avid_Demand]

Thank you for the response, Gaston! I really appreciate it.

So you are certain that my hreflang and canonical tags are implemented correctly? For example, my Spanish version (https://www.example.com/es_ES/

Is this implementation correct?

Also, will I have any duplicate content issues with these different language versions?

[GastonRiera]

Hello there,

Watch out your question, there is a site there. If its your clients, edit it.

Canonical and hreflang seems OK. 
Blocking other languages/countries is wrong. There you are allowing google to see ONLY the us version.

For further reading, take a look at these articles:
Hreflang:
Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console
International checklist - Moz Blog
Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz Blog Canonicals:
SEO Best Practices for Canonical URLs + the Rel=Canonical Tag - Whiteboard Friday Consolidate duplicate URLs - Google Search Console Help

Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.