Multilingual sites: Canonical and Alternate tag implementation question
-
Hello,
I would like some clarification about the correct implementation of the rel="alternate" tag and the canonical tag.
The example given at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 recommends implementing the canonical tag on all region specific sub-domains, and have it point to the www version of the website Here's the example given by Google.
My question is the following. Would this technique also apply if I have region specific sites site local TLD. In other words, if I have www.example.com, www.example.co.uk, www.example.ca – all with the same content in English, but prices and delivery options tailored for US, UK and Canada residents, should I go ahead and implement the canonical tag and alternate tag as follows:
I am a bit concerned about canonicalizing an entire local TLD to the .com site.
-
Since you are using ccTLD's I do not believe you have to use rel=canon to the .com. If you have three distinct sites, the way you have the alternate here is correct. In the .com you would set geotargeting in WMT. Go to site configuration, click settings, choose geographic target and set for the US. This will insure that the .com is for U.S. and prevent confusion since you have the other two ccTLD's.
You won't have duped content issues this way.As to choosing the rel=canon, you could do it each for its own domain, or if you want to share content, etc. you could do a cross domain rel=canon.
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
-
Google Search Console Site Property Questions
I have a few questions regarding Google Search Console. Google Search Console tells you to add all versions of your website https, http, www, and non-www. 1.) Do I than add ALL the information for ALL versions? Sitemaps, preferred site, etc.? 2.) If yes, when I add sitemaps to each version, do I add the sitemap url of the site version I'm on or my preferred version? - For instance when adding a sitemap to a non-www version of the site, do I use the non-www version of the sitemap? Or since I prefer a https://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml do I use it there? 3.) When adding my preferred site (www or non-www) do I use my preferred site on all site versions? (https, http, www, and non-www) Thanks in advance. Answers vary throughout Google!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
Canonical URL Tag
I have 3 websites with same content, I want to add Canonical tag to my main website. Is this also important to mentioned other duplicate URL in canonical tag in main website? or just need to just add
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
Is it ok to add rel=CANONICAL into the desktop version on top of the rel="alternate" Tag (Mobile vs Desktop version)
Hi mozzers, We launched a mobile site a couples months ago following the parallel mobile structure with a URL:m.example.com The week later my moz crawl detected thousands of dups which I resolved by implementing canonical tags on the mobile version and rel=alternate onto the desktop version. The problem here is that I still also got Dups from that got generated by the CMS. ?device=mobile ?device=desktop One of the options to resolve those is to add canonicals on the desktop versions as well on top of the rel=alternate tag we just implemented. So my question here: is it dangerous to add rel=canonical and rel=alternate tags on the desktop version of the site or not? will it disrupt the rel=canonical on mobile? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How accurate and quick does Google pick up on canonical tags?
Hey Peeps! I was just wondering what your experiences are in how fast Google will pick up on canonical tags and how often they use the 'strong hint' in stead of leaving it be? I'm based in The Netherlands and for websites with a decent amount of content and links (where Google indexes new content quickly) they pick up on it within 1-2 weeks. So far they've ignored some canonical tags on one of my websites. Perhaps that's because they don't agree with the degree in which the pages are similar. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenvanVessum0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1 -
Canonical Tag and Affiliate Links
Hi! I am not very familiar with the canonical tag. The thing is that we are getting traffic and links from affiliates. The affiliates links add something like this to the code of our URL: www.mydomain.com/category/product-page?afl=XXXXXX At this moment we have almost 2,000 pages indexed with that code at the end of the URL. So they are all duplicated. My other concern is that I don't know if those affilate links are giving us some link juice or not. I mean, if an original product page has 30 links and the affiliates copies have 15 more... are all those links being counted together by Google? Or are we losing all the juice from the affiliates? Can I fix all this with the canonical tag? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Architecture questions.
I have two architecture related questions. Fewer folders is better. For example, www.site.com/product should rank better than www.site.com/foldera/folderb/product, all else constant. However, to what extreme does it make sense to remove folders? With a small site of 100 or so pages, why not put all files in the main directory? You'd have to manually build the navigation versus tying navigation to folder structure, but would the benefit justify the additional effort on a small site? I see a lot of sites with expansive footer menus on the home page and sometimes on every page. I can see how that would help indexing and user experience by making every page a click or two apart. However, what does that do to the flow of link juice? Does Google degrade the value of internal footer links like they do external footer links? If Google does degrade internal footer links, then having a bunch of footer links would waste link juice by sending a large portion of juice through degraded links, wouldn't it? Thank you in advance, -Derek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dvansant0