Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site
-
OK, 2 primary questions for a multilingual site. This specific site has 2 language so I'll use that for the examples.
1 - Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag Necessary?
The first is regarding the correct implementation of hreflang, and whether or not I should have a self-referencing hreflang tag.
In other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), I am uncertain whether the source code should contain the second line below:
Obviously the Spanish version should reference the English version, but does it need to reference itself? I have seen both versions implemented, with seemingly good results, but I want to know the best practice if it exists.
2 - Canonical of Current Language or Default Language?
The second questions is regarding which canonical to use on the secondary language pages. I am aware of the update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines recently that state not to use canonical, but they say not to do it because everyone was messing it up, not because it shouldn't be done.
So, in other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), which of the two following canonicals is correct?
- OR
For this question, you can assume that (A) the English version of the site is our default and (B) the content is identical.
Thanks guys, feel free to ask any qualifiers you think are relevant.
-
As a 2014 follow up to anyone reading this thread, Google later released a tag labeled "x-default" that should make the self-referencing canonical question moot.
Read more at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html
-
Thanks John - as mentioned on Twitter I appreciate you sharing tested results. Haven't had time to test on my own sites and certainly don't want to be testing on a client's live production site.
I did notice that one of your posts (http://www.johnfdoherty.com/canonical-tag-delays-googlebot-web-vs-mobile-index/) does have the self-referencing hreflang but the Spanish version does not. Based on recreating your SERP screenshots myself, it looks like it's working fine.
Also, I think my opinion on the Au/En version where you're geotargeting with the same language is that is should be set up the way you indicated, so I'm glad to see more testing that has confirmed that.
Thanks for taking the time to answer - Thanks to Dave as well!
-
Thanks Mike.
Regarding your comment on canonicals - I agree that separate languages should be treated with different canonicals - I think John's response above has confirmed my hunch with testing, however.
Regarding hreflangs - I don't think there's any penalty either. The trouble is that Google, as many of us have experienced, often makes mistakes on code that should function fine. Google Authorship is a good example. So, just trying to work out the best practices for this before I make a client recommendation.
Regarding feedback outside Moz - @IanHowells weighed in on Twitter. His opinion was (A) self-referencing is not necessary and (B) canonicals should be for each language, not pointed to the default language.
-
Hey Kane -
Jumping in here because I told you I would. I've seen it work two different ways.
As you saw in my posts, I have the following configuration:
- Self-referencing canonicals (/es/ canonicalizes to /es/, regular canonicalizes to itself)
- HREFLANG point to each other as the alternate.
When you search "canonical delays with Googlebot" in google.es, the English ranks first and then the Spanish. Of course, with the Spanish search "etiquetta canonical retrasa con googlebot" the Spanish one ranks. This is, of course, a test with two different languages.
I've seen it work with two English-language URLs (Australia and English) where the following is what worked:
- Canonical referencing the primary (English)
- HREFLANG pointing to each other
The title/meta description of the /au/ version disappeared because of the canonical but the /au/ version ranked in google.com/au instead of the regular URL.
The self-referencing HREFLANG seems to not be necessary, but I've never had an issue using it. However, your mileage may vary.
BTW, all of this testing was done by my coworker Dave Sottimano, not me. But these were the findings.
-
I was so excited that I'd found something for you that I didn't read the first part of the article carefully enough. Here's what I think based on the principles of canonicals and hreflangs as I understand them:
Since canonicals are meant to reduce confusion and duplicates, what could you do that would support that goal? If I saw multiple different versions of a product page that were essentially identical (perhaps they had different filtering options or search terms but resolved to the same content), then consolidating them all would make perfect sense. If, however, I saw two pages that had the exact same meaning but were in different languages, I would consider them as separate--you wouldn't accidentally mistake one for the other.
As for hreflangs, the second article mentioned 4 versions of the content and listed all 4 hreflangs. The idea is that the search engine could discover all the versions of the content quickly and select the right one for the searcher's language and location. I can't imagine there being a penalty for listing every one, either.
Have you had any other feedback (from outside SEOmoz)?
-
Thanks for your response Mike.
Re: Canonicals:
The first Google blog post you linked to is applicable when some of the content is translated. For example, if your English Facebook profile showed up on the Spanish section of the site, but they only translated buttons, nav menus, etc.
"We’re trying to specifically improve the situation where the template is localized but the main content of a page remains duplicate/identical across language/country variants."
So, this isn't a perfect match for my situation, which is a 100% translated page, which changes the reasoning behind the proposed canonical solution in that post - so that question is still in the air for me.
Re: Self-Referential hreflang Tags:
The second article is definitely relevant and is the primary announcement of hreflang, but doesn't clearly indicate whether the self-referential hreflang tag for the page you're on is necessary. Now, I've seen it used both ways successfully, so my first question is somewhat moot. John Doherty's testing from January 2012 and the homepage of WPML.org each use a different method, but Google.com and Google.es seem to be able to sort out each domain correctly.
-
Google shared this post to define how to handle both issues: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html
The idea presented there is to pick the default language of the page--for most sites in the U.S. it would be English.
Then all the foreign language versions of the page should set their canonical to point to the page using the default language.
Finally, each page is to list the alternative languages with hreflang link tags.
An updated post says that ALL the languages should be listed: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
So I would set the canonicals to:
for all variants (in English or any other language)
and list all of the hreflang links on every page:
This would put you in compliance with Google's main post on the subject and their more recent update.
--Mike
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
-
International SEO & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags
Hi Everyone, I have a client that has two sites (example.com & example.co.uk) each have the same English content, but no hreflang or rel="canonical" tags in place. Would this be interpreted as duplicate content? They haven't changed the copy to speak to specific regions, but have tried targeting the UK with a ccTLD. I've taken a look at some other comparable question on MOZ like this post - > https://moz.com/community/q/international-hreflang-will-this-handle-duplicate-content where one of the answers says **"If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary." **If hreflang tags are not necessary, then would I need rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content? Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow SEO out.
International SEO | | ccox10 -
Hreflang problem?
Hello, We do have a client with a site in multiple versions (one domain per country). French and Spanish versions work really fine, but the problem comes up with the .com and .co.uk versions. This is my hreflang piece of code: When I go to Google.co.uk and search the exact match domain keyword "how much cost an app", I only find the howmuchcostanapp.com domain (1st or 2nd page) instead of howmuchcostanapp.co.uk. The UK one is not appearing! This is very strange. I have spent a lot of time trying to solve this, but I don't know what else to do. Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and help!
International SEO | | Yeeply.com0 -
How to best set up international XML site map?
Hi everyone, I've been searching about a problem, but haven't been able to find an answer. We would like to generate a XML site map for an international web shop. This shop has one domain for Dutch visitors (.nl) and another domain for visitors of other countries (Germany, France, Belgium etc.) (.com). The website on the 2 domains looks the same, has the same template and same pages, but as it is targeted to other countries, the pages are in different languages and the urls are also in different languages (see example below for a category bags). Example Netherlands:
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
Dutch domain: www.client.nl
Example Dutch bags category page: www.client.nl/tassen Example France:
International domain: www.client.com
Example French bags category page: www.client.com/sacs When a visitor is on the Dutch domain (.nl) which shows the Dutch content, he can switch country to for example France in the country switch and then gets redirected to the other, international .com domain. Also the other way round. Now we want to generate a XML sitemap for these 2 domains. As it is the same site, but on 2 domains, development wants to make 1 sitemap, where we take the Dutch version with Dutch domain as basis and in the alternates we specify the other language versions on the other domain (see example below). <loc>http://www.client.nl/tassen</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="http://www.client.com/sacs"
/></xhtml:link<br> Is this the best way to do this? Or would we need to make 2 site maps, as it are 2 domains?0 -
Optimizing for 3 international sites, how to avoid getting into trouble
Hi Guys As a newbie, I want to avoid any penalties or mistakes as possible that will be due to unknown and have taken some steps to educate myself around international sites and multiple domains. our aim was to target new zealand first and then branch out. Whilst we are pondering the NZ site and writing fresh unique articles for the site and the blog. And besides making the currency, language more relevant to these domains, is there anything else I could work on? I thought about making the meta tags different for the home page and adding Australia etc If we are going to spend time growing the site organically I thought I would make the most of spending the time growing all three together.... Any recommendations on how to get started and optimize the 3 alot better? Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may1 -
International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
Hi Guys, I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example: domain.com/en-gb domain.com/en-us As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example: domain.com/sitemap.xml domain.com/robots.txt The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example: The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to: domain.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-gb/robots.txt and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example : domain.com/en-us/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-us/robots.txt Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
International SEO | | CarlWint0 -
Hreflang hindering performance?
I want to add hreflang on my website but the dev guys think it will hinder performance? Any thoughts/experience with this one way or the other? Thanks!
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
My site is not showing on google.com ?
My website is not showing at all on google.com searches under search terms. It is showing if i search for my domain (xyz.com) but not by keywords. Searching by keywords and search terms shows my website on yahoo , bing and non US oogle as google.co.uk or google.com.pk on first page. Would appreciate any help in trying to understand why this is happening? The website is medicare.md. if you search for term "medicare doctors PG county maryland" it is #1 in bing and yahoo but not even showing on google.com first TEN pages, although not banned. Interestingly if you do that search on google.co.pk it is #4. Quite Puzzuling !! Would appreciate any help or advice . Sherif Hassan
International SEO | | sherohass0 -
I have on site translated into several languages on different TLDs, .com, .de, .co.uk, .no, etc. Is this duplicate content?
Three of the sites are English (.co.uk, .com, .us) as well as foreign (.de, .no, etc.) - are these all seen as having duplicate content on every site? They're hosted under the same EpiServer backend system if this helps. But I am still copying and pasting content over each site, and translating where necessary, so I'm concerned this is indexed as being large amounts of duplicate content. Site traffic doesn't appear to be suffering but as I'm currently putting together new SEOs strategies, I want to cover this possibility. Any advice on ensuring the sites aren't penalised appreciated!
International SEO | | hurtigruten0