Rel=alternate to help localize sites
-
I am wondering about the efficiency of the rel=alternate tag and how well it works at specifically localizing content.
Example:
I have a website on a few ccTLD's but for some reason my .com shows up on Google.co.uk before my .co.uk version of my page. Some people have mentioned using rel=alternate but in my research this only seems to be applicable for duplicate content in another language. If I am wrong here can somebody please help me better understand this application of the rel=alternate tag. All my research leads me to rel=alternate hreflang= and I am not sure that is what I want.
Thanks,
Chris Birkholm -
Not really so. In fact you need to use also the rel="canonical".
In order to not get you confused, I really suggest you to follow the implementations steps presented by Tim Grice in this post published on SEOWizz:
-
Gianluca,
Really appreciate the feedback here. So the one thing I have a question of then is how this rel=alternate tag would look on my .com as this is where I am apparently getting a little confused. I would basically list my other English versions there correct and the same for my co.uk, etc...?
-
Hi Thomas,
actually the rel="alternate" "hreflang" can be used also to define the region, apart the language.
That means that in your specific case you could use en-US (English version for USA users) - en-GB (English version for British users) - en-AU (English version for Australian users) and so on.
Then, in order to not have the .com site I suggest you to use the rel="alternate". More over, if the .com site is meant specifically for USA market, it would be also better to specify to Google that USA is the market in Google Webmaster Tools, because the contrary will mean that you are asking to it rank also in every regional Google, the .co.uk one too.
Others things that help search engines understand what site to present first in case like yours are the use of the local currency, address and phone numbers, but I don't know if it's your case. Also, your UK site maybe need a stronger link profile, especially rich in links by local authoritative sites.
Another "add on" is sometimes the use of the rel="canonical", but your doesn't seem the case where to use it
Finally, I give you a few links that could be helpful for you:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/advanced-international-seo-rel-alternate-hreflang-x/13122011/ << A post by Adam Audette, of which I suggest you read also the comments;
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2137882/Newest-International-SEO-Challenge-Hreflang-Canonical-Tags << An interesting overview done in Search Engine Watch
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Rel=dofollow and rel=nofollow
Hi, I found a link pointing to my client's site that looks like this: <a <span="" class="html-tag">href</a><a <span="" class="html-tag">="</a>http://www.clientsite.com" rel="dofollow" target="_blank" rel='nofollow'>Anchor text Could someone tell me if this links acts as a dofollow or as a nofollow? It's the first time I see such a link and I don't know how to handle it. Best regards, Edimar
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Noriel0 -
Is there an advantage to using rel=canonical rather than noindex on pages on my mobile site (m.company.com)?
Is there an advantage to using link rel=alternate (as recommended by Google) rather than noindex on pages on my mobile site (m.company.com)? The content on the mobile pages is very similar to the content on the desktop site. I see Google recommends canonical and alternate tags, but what are the benefits of using those rather than noindex?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jennifer.new0 -
SEO Site Analysis
I am looking for a company doing a SEO analysis on our website www.interelectronix.com and write a optimization proposal incl. a budgetary quote for performing those optimizations.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | interelectronix0 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0 -
This site got hit but why..?
I am currently looking at taking on a small project website which was recently hit but we are really at a loss as to why so I wanted to open this up to the floor and see if anyone else had some thoughts or theories to add. The site is Howtotradecommodities.co.uk and the site appeared to be hit by Penguin because sure enough it drops from several hundred visitors a day to less than 50. Nothing was changed about the website, and looking at the Analytics it bumbled along at a less than 50 visitors a day. On June 25th when Panda 3.8 hit, the site saw traffic increase to between 80-100 visitors a day and steadily increases almost to pre-penguin levels. On August 9th/10th, traffic drops off the face of the planet once again. This site has some amazing links http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/04/algorithmsdata-vs-analystsreports-fight/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesAgate
http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/using/help/business/researchingfinance/stockmarket/ That were earned entirely naturally/editorially. I know these aren't "get out of jail free cards" but the rest of the profile isn't that bad either. Normally you can look at a link profile and say "Yep, this link and that link are a bit questionable" but beyond some slightly off-topic guest blogging done a while back before I was looking to get involved in the project there really isn't anything all that fruity about the links in my opinion. I know that the site design needs some work but the content is of a high standard and it covers its topic (commodities) in a very comprehensive and authoritative way. In my opinion, (I'm not biased yet because it isn't my site) this site genuinely deserves to rank. As far as I know, this site has received no unnatural link warnings. I am hoping this is just a case of us having looked at this for too long and it will be a couple of obvious/glaring fixes to someone with a fresh pair of eyes. Does anyone have any insights into what the solution might be? [UPDATE] after responses from a few folks I decided to update the thread with progress I made on investigating the situation. After plugging the domain into Open Site Explorer I can see quite a few links that didn't show up in Link Research Tools (which is odd as I thought LRT was powered by mozscape but anyway... shows the need for multiple tools). It does seem like someone in the past has been a little trigger happy with building links to some of the inner pages.0 -
How to get site into Yahoo News?
Can anyone provide some guidance on both how to submit your site to Yahoo News as well as some tips for how to get accepted into Yahoo News?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1 -
Mobile alternates and redirects
Hi! We have a desktop version of our site at http://www.domain.com, and some weeks ago, we launched a mobile edition at http://m.domain.com, replicating the most important sections of the site, but not yet all of them. Actually, if you access with a mobile device userAgent to any desktop url you are redirected to the home of the mobile web. This is the only redirect implemented about mobile and desktop versions. A) Shall we also redirect "Googlebot-Mobile" to our mobile site, or it could be considered cloaking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marianoSoler98
B) Its necessary to implement the rel="alternate" media="handheld" tag in all of our Desktop SEO URLs? And in our mobile ones? Can't it be implemented via sitemaps like the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag?
C) Would the linkbuilding job done on the Desktop version affects the Mobile also, or we would still need to do a separate job? Thanks!0