Multiple hreflang tags
-
I'm trying to advise on the multi country seo for a site in terms of markup. We've already decided on using sub folders rather than separate sites or subdomains due to an established link profile and good rankings in all countries. The question is in relation to the homepage. Obviously this is the page most likely to rank well in any country (the site is a .com). But can multiple hreflang tags be put on the page to say that the page targets many countries? Or would leaving the hreflang tag off allow it to just rank for all countries?
Also do Yahoo and Bing follow hreflang tags? I can't find any info on this anywhere!
Thanks very much in advance for any help!
-
Hi Gregory,
Did you get any further with your query above? I am considering implementing the same thing...
Thanks,
Dan
-
Does anyone have experience listing multiple countries for a page that serves a region? This would be used for sites that have regional content pages divided like North America, South America, EMEA (Europe / Middle East / Africa), APAC (Asia / Pacific). For example, can you tag the North America pages en-us and en-ca on the same page so that it targets English for US and Canada?
-
Hi there,
Hreflang annotations serve to inform Google to which language (and additionally if you want to geotarget, country) each of your URL versions are targeted.
You can use the hreflang default annotation, as described here, when you want to show a default URL for a language / country that you're not targeting, which sounds like the situation you describe.
On the other hand, Bing doesn't support hreflang, but you can use the content language meta tag instead that they do take into consideration:
Thanks,
Aleyda
-
You can definitely have multiple hreflangs. This is the way to set it up:
The exact syntax to use in the header of the original would look something like this, for a site that has an original in English and alternate versions in Spanish (targeted to the audience in Mexico) and German:
(see: http://returnonnow.com/2012/06/international-seo-hreflang-tag/)
You should also deal with hreflang and alt languages in your sitemap, per: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865
I'm also fairly sure that Bing does not support hreflang. Only Google & Yandex do, I believe. I assume that will change as more international sites get their properties setup for Google and other engines want to stay relevant on international search.
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
-
Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags
Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
GeoIP Redirects & hreflang
Hello, We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects. Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects. We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory. However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path. My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market. Thanks.
International SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Hreflang Alternate & Pagination
Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.
International SEO | | ABullis0 -
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Multiple Domains
I have a .com domain which sells digital and physical products. I was thinking about doing a .co.uk domain just for the physical products. So far im just getting very confused with how to do this with google plus. Whats the best way to do this? Have a .com for worldwide and a .co.uk for just UK.
International SEO | | theindic0 -
Help with hreflang configuration
We currently have different country versions of our site with a hreflang configuration; we have a spanish site targeted for Spain and then different subdirectories for every latin american country we're targeting to. Other than minimal differences, at the moment they are similar until we can handle providing unique content for each country. Our goal, then, would be to show the right one for every Google version, but also to avoid penalties. Our configuration is like this: ... Do you reckon this would be the right approach? Moz is currently telling us that there's duplicate content between the different country subdirectories, and to an extent there is, does that correlate with Google penalizing us for it? Also I've seen examples of self-referential alternates (such as including the in the Mexican version), or to put the canonical referencing the primary http://www.example.com/, will any of this help to our goals? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | | doctorSIM0 -
Alternate tag. Anybody had success getting English websites only with localized currency served with alternate tag?
I have an English website with USD prices and US phone.
International SEO | | lcourse
Via currency dropdown visitors in Ireland can choose EUR as currency, visitors from Denmark Danish crown etc and via GEO IP I also serve local contact phone numbers. So I though it made sense to define this with the alternate tags, but now after several months google still does not pickup these pages in local searches. Did anybody have success with getting a website just with currency parameter ranked locally using the alternate tag? Does it help to have also static links (not only dropdown links) to currency versions on the page? Any other thing that could help to have google pick these up? Below my code sample:0 -
Links metrics & rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Bonjour! If with rel="alternate" hreflang="x" we can indicate to Google that an URL have translated equivalents of a page, are the links metrics splited between all pages or Google considers all the pages as only one? Thanks! Maxime
International SEO | | Maxoulala0