"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites

[ESL_Education]

Hello,

We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website.
Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language.

These are the languages we target:

• French – FRANCE
• French – SWITZERLAND
• French – BELGIUM
• Italian – ITALY
• Italian – SWITZERLAND
• German – GERMANY
• German – SWITZERLAND
• German – AUSTRIA
• Spanish – SPAIN
• Spanish – COLOMBIA
• Spanish – PANAMA
• Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC
• Swedish – SWEDEN
• Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS
• English – UK
• English – INTERNATIONAL

The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
The questions :

• Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language?
• Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all?
• Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs?
• Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market?
• Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place?

Looking forward to your feedback.

Best wishes,

Maëlle

[simon_realbuzz]

Take a look at this video from Matt Cutts outlining their position on translated content.

In addition, as to the question of canonical element and hreflang you'll see that Google removed this portion from their guidelines with an update saying 'to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using rel=canonical.' Check out the piece for the current position.

I also had advice direct from Christopher Semturs from Google who said directly to me "the golden rule I personally recommend to everybody using hreflang: In doubt, don't use rel-canonical."

[ESL_Education]

Thank you very much for your response, Simon.

Having the international version of our site showing in the UK would not be a critical issue, as we make it easy to switch to the other languages/markets versions.

It is quite odd that Google does not view translated content as duplicate, I wasn't aware of this – would you be able to provide with some source where this is explained, please?

Also, do you have a view on my question re the rel="canonical" tag – would there be any reason not to use the "hreflang="x" tag but use instead the rel="canonical" tag, thus specifying a "master" version out of our 3 French versions, for instance?

[simon_realbuzz]

Since Google does not view translated content as duplicate I would suggest that you would only need to specify the alternate language versions of the same language. For example on your France, Switzerland and Belgium pages using hreflang to specify all 3 alternate French language versions, and then doing the same for your German language pages, English language pages etc. You would not need to reference all alternative URLs regardless of language.

Using hreflang in this way should ensure that your intended version is displayed in the correct country SERPs. This is usually the case although on occasions I have found that the international versions may occasionally be shown in the UK instead of the UK version, but these occasions are rare.