Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    8992
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Zanox
      Zanox last edited by

      A customer of ours has a website in Belgium. There two main languages in Belgium: Dutch and French.
      At first there was only a Dutch version with a .be extension. Right now they are implementing the French Belgium version on the URL website.be/fr. All of the content and comments will be translated. Also the URL’s will change from Dutch to French, so you've got two URL’s with the same content but in another language. Question: Should you use a canonical tag on translated content in a multi-language country?

      I think Google will understand this is just for the usability for a Multilanguage country. What do you guys think???

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Zanox
        Zanox @Aleyda last edited by

        Hi Aleyda,

        Thanks for your answer and thanks for the links. As written in the description everything will be translated, so also the title, desc, comments etc.). So we don't have to worry about anything "everything is gonna be alright" (Bob Marley) :-).

        In addition the hreflang annotations are a good way to communicate with Google about what is what 🙂

        Thanks!

        Best regards, Wesley

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Aleyda
          Aleyda last edited by

          Hi Wesley,

          If you enable a new language version totally optimized in another language (From the URLs, to titles, descriptions, text content, comments, etc.) there shouldn't be any problem. If you want to help Google to identity that this is your French version (in this case algo specifically targeted to a Belgium language), you can use the hreflang tag specifying the language and country, as explained here, in your pages html head section. Additionally, you can add the hreflang annotations in your XML sitemap as described here. You can also use this tool to facilitate the process.

          Best regards,

          Aleyda

          Zanox 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Zanox
            Zanox last edited by

            Hi Mike,

            Thanks for your reply and the linking 🙂

            Just as I thought we don't have to worry about that as long we're optimizing the usability for the visitor. That's Google's way of thinking in all cases.

            In addtion, I want to make a crazy skeptical statement:
            After listening to Matt, we can conclude that:
            It's perfectly fine by Google for a Dutch website (website.nl) to republish hand-translated content from a foreign website!

            I don't think it will work like this. What do you think? (I know... this is a little bit of an other subject 😉 )

            This is a Question that's coming into my mind right now. I know enough through your link for my main question. Thanks for that 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Mike.Goracke
              Mike.Goracke last edited by

              You shouldn't have to worry about it.

              I would reference this article where Matt Cutts explains that if you are professionally translating it for usability... you are good; however, if you use Google translate to spam your content in a bunch of languages... that is bad.

              Hope this helps and answers your question.

              Mike

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • srbello

                Are rel=author and rel=publisher meta tags currently in use?

                Hello,  Do these meta tags have any current usage? <meta name="author" content="Author Name"><meta name="publisher" content="Publisher Name"> I have also seen this usage linking to a companies Google+ Page:Thank you

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | srbello
                0
              • Doylejg3

                Google Adding Wrong Location to Title Tag on Multi-Branch Business Homepage

                We're a business with 5 separate locations across 5 cities in Upstate NY.  While doing some visual ad previews in the adwords interface I noticed that Google is altering my title tag and adding the word "Rochester" to the end of it, cutting short my designated title tag. Rochester is the location of our headquarters so not a big deal for 1/5th of our customers.  But to my dismay, the same thing is happening when searching from the geo locations of my other branches.  So when searching for my business in Buffalo (we have a physical address in Buffalo), the title tag in the results still says our company name and "Rochester". This of course is likely leading to confusion and actively harming our organic CTR in our branch locations.  This is happening in all of the remaining 4 branch locations.  I'm at a loss, I tried lengthening the title tag but it still gets cut off. The term Rochester appears (as do the other branch locations) in my meta description for the homepage as well as in the text of the page itself.  I haven't gone so far as to remove that yet and hopefully don't have to. Does anyone have any ideas?  Thank you in advance!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Doylejg3
                0
              • muzzmoz

                How (or if) to apply re canonical tags to Shopify?

                Anyone familiar with Shopify will understand the problems of their directory structure. Every time you add a product to a 'collection' it essentially creates a duplicate. For example... https://www.domain.com/products/product-slim-regular-bikini may also appear as: https://www.domain.com/collections/all/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/bikinis/products/product-slim-regular-bikini etc, etc It's not uncommon to have up to six duplicates of each product. So my question is twofold: Firstly, should I worry about this from an SEO point of view? I understand the desire to minimise potential duplicate content issues and also in focussing the 'juice' on just one page per product. But I also planned on trying to build the authority of the collection pages. If I request Google not to index the product pages which link off the collections, does this not devalue these collections pages? Secondly, I understand the correct way to fix these is using 'rel canonical' tags, but I'm not clear about HOW to actually do this. Shopify support has not been very helpful. They have provided two different instructions, so just added to the confusion (see below). Shopify instruction #1: Add the following to the theme.liquid file... <title><br />{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} – tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} – Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} – {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}<br /></title>
                {% if page_description %} {% endif %} Shopify instruction #2: Add the following to each individual product page... So, can anyone help clarify: The best strategic approach to this inherent SEO issue with Shopify (besides moving to another platform!)? and If 'rel canonical' tags is the way to go, exactly where and how to apply them? Regards, Murray

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz
                1
              • kirin44355

                Heading Tags (Specifically H2) being used within images

                Hello, Mozzers I have a question regarding placement of heading tags. I have seen this asked a few times on the forum but some are from a couple years ago so wanted to get a more up to date answer regarding this. We want to add H2 tags across our site but our two options are to wrap images we are using as navigation on the top of the page, these are directly below our pages H1 tag and actually make sense. Example H1 title: Vehicles Images are specific brand logo with H2 being wrapped to pull the img alt: "Ford Vehicles" "Checvy vehicles" etc. The wrap would look something like this: I appreciate your time, Chris

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
                0
              • PeteC12

                H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?

                Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit  or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
                0
              • rpaiva

                Adding a Canonical Tag to each page referencing itself?

                Hey Mozers! I've noticed that on www.Zappos.com they have a Canonical tag on each page referencing it self.  I have heard that this is a popular method but I dont see the point in canon tagging a page to its self. Any thoughts?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva
                0
              • NakulGoyal

                Wildcard Redirects & Canonical Tags

                I have an interesting situation. Current URLs Example1: www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1-1.html Canonical on All Above URLs:
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html New URL:
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-4567.html Current URLs Example2: www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1-1.html Canonical on All Above URLs:
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html New URL:
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789.html Current URLs Example3: www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5-1.html
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5-1-1.html Canonical on All Above URLs:
                www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html New URL:
                www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html I want to make sure all variations of the above URL redirect to the new URLs.  However, as you see in Example 3, we are dealing with variables that are passed on. (+5 in this case). Question 1: What wildcard 301 redirect / regular expression can I use to tackle these ? Question 2: If we redirect www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html to www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html and www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html contains the canonical tag www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html, any concerns or red flags here ?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NakulGoyal
                0
              • deskstudio

                How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content

                I've  attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now  I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.