How should I handle hreflang tags if it's the same language in all targeting countries?
-
My company is creating an international version of our site at international.example.com. We are located in the US with our main site at www.example.com targeting US & Canada but offering slightly different products elsewhere internationally. Ideally, we would have hreflang tags for different versions in different languages, however, it's going to be an almost duplicate site besides a few different SKUs. All language and content on the site is going to be in English. Again, the only content changing is slightly different SKUs, they are almost identical sites. The subdomain is our only option right now. Should we implement hreflang tags even if both languages are English and only some of the content is different? Or will having just canonicals be fine? How should we handle this?
Would it make sense to use hreflang this way and include it on both versions? I believe this would be signaling for US & Canda visitors to visit our main site and all other users go to the international site. Am I thinking this correctly or should we be doing this a different way?
-
Hi tcope25,
Thanks for the clarification, that helps me to understand better the end goal. To futher clarify, you say "we want every other visitor in the world to visit our international subdomain." Do you mean "every other [English speaking] visitor in the world." ? If so, I think your proposed code is close. It is now just missing a self-referencing element, so it should be:
Just keep in mind that even if your tags are perfect, if your English US site has significantly more authority, it may show up in international search results anyway as rel="alternate" hreflang is a signal, not a directive.
Hope that helps!
Dana
-
Thanks for your comments Dana! I do appreciate the time you took to help explain more about hreflang.
I have implemented hreflang on multiple other websites in different languages without any issues. However, this situation is a bit different. To answer your questions...yes, our main site is the English site in the US & Canada. Same exact site, URL, content. We want every other visitor in the world to visit our international subdomain.
If implemented the code below, what would happen if I searched our website brand in the US? Would our main site come up? What would happen to a searcher in France? Would Google serve our international site?
By your comments above are you suggesting the below?
-
Hi tcope25,
Implementing rel="alternate" hreflang is likely one of the most complex, and most commonly incorrectly implemented elements for SEO. Just the example you've provided above would take about 30 minutes to talk through, clarify business needs, and then determine a course of action.
I normally don't push off answering a question, but I would highly recommend seeking out an SEO professional to help you sort this out. Tere's just a lot wrong with the proposed code above - sorry, not trying to be insulting, but helpful.
One real standout in your proposed code above that I would not recommend is to set your "x-default" to one of your secondary international sites. The "x-default" if used, should point to your strongest, primary version of your business sites. For example, if your English site in the US is your primary, most important site, then your "x-default" should the English US site URL.
Also based on your code above, it looks like you are serving the same content, via the same URLs to US and Canada searchers. If this is true , meaning you are not localising content for Canada and it is 100% the same page (I hope you aren't showing different content to US and Canada visitors via the same URL by attempting to use geo-location to decide what they see - that's a whole separate SEO issue) - then you don't need "en-us" and "en-ca" you just need "en" - But you would need to be sure that you haven't set your International Targeting in Google Search Console to "United States" - You need to leave the country targeting there unchecked.
This are very high level observations - I would recommend engaging a reliable SEO consultant to help make sure it's all implemented correctly.
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
-
How to not appear in incorrect country
Hi! I have a problem with the results in Google. My website ranks, but all countries appear in the search for example from Argentina.
International SEO | | SEO-Mediabros
I have the correct hreflang tags. How can I "block" the results of other countries? This is the site and this is the search example. Thank you! 🙂1 -
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish)
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish). For the user it would be useful to see these reviews but I am concerned about negative SEO impact.
International SEO | | lcourse
I would not want to invest into having them all translated by human translator. Any suggestions?0 -
Google Webmaster tools localization for double country
Hi, I have the following url structure in my webshop: www.example.com/nl www.example.com/de www.example.com/fr www.example.com/uk I have set up each local store in Google Webmaster Tools with the correct localization.
International SEO | | mikehenze
But for the Belgium market i dont have a seperate site. Half of them speak dutch (nl) and half of them speak french (fr). Will Google show the correct site (nl or fr) based on their language? Or will my sites not show up because belgium is not being used in my GWT ? Thanks.0 -
302 Redirect based on Language Detection
Hi, Our online application, magento e-commerce, has a script that detects browser language and does a 302 redirection to the language of choice ... www.mydomain.com/en/ or www.mydomain.com/es/ What's the SEO angle on this? Should I be concerned? thanks, Ben
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
Country-specific SEO
Hi, my client offers courses that whilst based in Manchester, England are mainly attended by people in countries such as Georgia, Libya and Nigeria etc. The people that attend the courses are fluent in English. We're looking at performing country-specific SEO and I have a few queries. The plan so far: Obtain TLD's in each target country. These TLD's would be hosted on the same server as the core site based in England. Option 1: Each TLD would be a microsite with content specific to the country including geo-signals, in English. Option 2: Each TLD would 301 redirect to the core site, i.e. example.sa redirects to example.com/sa/ and this country-specific section would have relevant geo-signals. So I have 3 questions at this point: 1. Most-all of the tips I have seen about country-specific SEO assume that the content should be translated to the native tongue although in this case, the audience are fluent English speaks. Does this make a difference? Is it okay to use English and still be able to rank in country-specific search engines? 2. Between options 1 & option 2 - which would be the optimum setup? 3. Last question, if we obtain the TLD's I hear that it's not necessary to also host that TLD in the target country, is this right? Thanks.
International SEO | | lokito0 -
Geo Targeting SEO Techniques for Google UK
I'm starting a new SEO project whereby I'll be targeting UK search engines only such as Google.co.uk, (I'm from the states) and I'm gathering all the information I can get on this topic Obviously, I got a CO.UK TLD, and hosting/IP is UK based, but can anyone shed light on other techniques that has worked for you, Besides of the above here is some advice I picked up so far; Regional directory listings,
International SEO | | Plorex
Inbound and outbound inks from/to UK based websites,
Geographic targeting in Google webmaster tools,
British slang... What else is there?
Much appreciated0 -
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 -
Est ce qu'on peut poser des questions en français ?
(can we ask questions in a language other than English?) Pour le SEO est ce qu'il faut mieux un domain avec les tirets ou sans ? Les américains aurait tendance a faire les domaines sans tirets
International SEO | | NeilInFrance
Par exemple goodseoconsultants.com Et bcp disent qu'utiliser les tirets fait "spammy" ; En France il y a plus tendance à mettre les tirets mais est ce qu'il y a une risque négatif pour le sites qui le font ? Par contre il y a plus de chances que les moteurs et les humaines comprennes les mots avec ; good-seo-consultants.com Qui a raison ? Neil0