International Site - Language Targetting

[J-Banz]

Hi Mozzers,

I am currently conducting a technical site audit on a large website. Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different languages). Also, they are not using cookies or scripts to auto-populate the language on the page, and the pages seem to be getting indexed just fine.

Currently, they have their language distinguished by sub-folder (i.e. example.org/blog/by-language/spanish/), which I plan to 301 redirect to example.org/blog/es/ for each language. However, they are not implementing any sitemaps or hreflang header tags.

I have not dealt with this in the past as all of my work has been done on smaller US sites, so I wanted to verify the steps I plan to take to ensure this is a solid approach.

• 301 redirect example.org/language/spanish/blog/ to example.org/es/blog/
• Recommend adding hreflang markup into the header for each language. (They have a lot of pages, so they may not implement this if it is too much work.)
• Highly recommend adding XML sitemaps for each content version of the site using the media flow HREFLANG Siitemap Tool.
• Setting up multiple Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language. I would also add the XML sitemap for each language.

Is this a solid approach, given the information above? I want to make sure I am fundamentally sound on this before suggesting so many large changes. Thank you in advance for any thoughts / wisdom you can instill!

---------------------additional information---------------------

If I am hearing you correctly, I would only submit one XML Sitemap for international content. It would look something like the below image. I would only use one GWT account to upload the file, and I would not need to add any additional markup on each page, as it will be located in the hreflang xml sitemap.

Finally, would it be a good or bad idea to 301 redirect their naming convention to a new, shorter one?

example.org/by-language/spanish/blog/this-is-an-example --> example.org/es/blog/this-is-an-example

bpXAYlr.png

[J-Banz]

Thank you very much Robert for your thorough follow-up. I am humbled at the insights you offered, and am very glad I asked about this. It is much more detailed than I was expecting, and definitely not something to make a hasty, uninformed decision on.

[RobertFisher]

Jbanz,

I am happy to help. I want you to realize that for a first multi-lingual, international site, you are taking on a big project. You need to be very clear as to what you are doing before you do it. The reason I preface my comments is: I think you are getting confused between language and country/region or seeing them both as the same (they are not). NOTE: Before you begin to make changes to URLs, use a program like Screaming Frog so you do not lose any of your urls. You will be able to go back afterwards and compare apples to apples on your 301's. (Yes, based on the structure you gave in the example, I do think it would be good to clean them up.)

You state:** Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different** languages).

Then you state:  **...****Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language **If you are geotargeting, you are saying I want to influence a region (not a language). So, a gTLD for the US would set the geotargeting in WMT to US. That same site could have Spanish pages (we do this a lot in Texas), Vietnamese pages, etc. but you are geotargeting the US and you are providing content to people in the US who speak these various languages. That is different from having a gTLD that is trying to influence many worldwide markets. If the US site I mentioned wants to influence (target) all Spanish speakers in the world, you would not set the geo-targeting in WMT to the US as that would dampen your exposure in Spain, Chile, Mexico, etc. You would instead (if using a single site and directories) use the sitemap approach talked about in GWMT. It clearly says, "These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers." So, you are deciding what you want to do and you can do both.

If you use the example from GWMT, they have an English site, but they want to target German speakers worldwide. So if you are saying that you have German pages and you want to geo-target German speakers in Switzerland and also all German speakers the sitemap would look like theirs.  (See notes after code).

• <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/english/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  <url><loc>http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/</loc>
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de"
  href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="en"
  href="http://www.example.com/english/"
  />
  <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
  hreflang="de-ch"          **This is saying German speakers in Switzerland and establishes a location. **
  href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"  **This is the url for those in Switzerland who speak German. **
  /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

  You must create a separate url element for each URL. Each url element must include a loc tag indicating the page URLs, and an xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="XX" subelement for every alternate version of the page, including itself. </urlset>

• This example uses the language code de for the URL targeted at German speakers anywhere, and the language-locale code de-ch for German speakers in Switzerland. If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea to provide a URL for geographically unspecified users. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en) page. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK.

Again, you are taking on a big task. Go at it slowly and methodically until you get the hang of it.

Best, 
Robert

[J-Banz]

Thank you Robert for your thorough explanation! I am sorry your first post timed-out, and I appreciate the follow up post. I added a little clarification based off of what you said.

[RobertFisher]

Jbanz,

Your question is reasonable and I wrote an extensive answer that, when I hit post, all went away as moz had logged me out. Even though I could still go to my community profile, etc. and had an option to logout. Makes me want to scream. Spend a lot of time answering and nothing to show for it. But, maybe the shorter version is better.

So, since I have little time I will give you the condensed version. You are trying to use language to target countries and it won't work the way you are trying to do it. You cannot use geo-targeting of a generic TLD when you want to target more than one country.

What you need to do is back up two or three steps and read the following about sitemaps and targeting from GWMT:

Submit rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in a sitemap. (NOTE: not multiple sitemaps for urls from one gTLD domain) This will keep it simple for you. From GWMT  (the bold is mine)

If your site targets users in many languages and, optionally, countries, you can use Sitemaps to provide Google with rel="alternate" hreflang="x". These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers. More information.

Imagine you have an English language page, targeted at English speakers worldwide. You also have equivalent versions of this page targeted at German speakers worldwide, and German speakers located in Switzerland. Your full set of URLs is:

• www.example.com/english/
• www.example.com/deutsch/
• www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/

I hope this helps you out and makes it all simpler for you. 
Robert