Should We Add the W3.org Language Tag To Every Page Or Just The Home Page?
-
Greetings,
We have five international sites around the world, two of which are in difference languages. Currently we have the following line of html code on the home page of each of the sites:
Clearly, we need to change the "en" portion for the sites that aren't in English, but, should we include that meta tag in each of the site's pages, or will the home page suffice. Thanks!
-
Google doesn't care the W3.org language tag (Bing does it, instead).
Said that using it on every page is a good practice for W3.org, hence do that.
For Google, if the site is using a Country Code Top Level Name (i.e.: .it, .fr, .de...), then the site will be automatically target the country related to the domain termination (i.e.: .de > Germany and just Germany, not Austria or any other German speaking country).
If the site is under a generic domain name (i.e.: .com), then you have to specify in the Google Webmaster Tools setting of the site what country (hence regional Google) you want the site itself to target.
NOTE: if you are targeting language and not countries, don't use ccTld domain names, because, as I said before, those domain names targets only the country the domain termination is paired to.
Then... use the hreflang="x" markup so to suggest to Google what URL must be shown to the user depending on the language they use (check this official Google page).
Finally, do a great localization of the content and try to obtain authoritative quality signals like links from local sites and social shares from local users.
-
Thanks, Yiannis
I definitely see higher rankings and traffic for the sites that have the specific language tag.
Does anyone else have other input to provide?
-
Hello,
Index page will be more than enough. Also the fact that the language is non English is now sufficient enough for google to understand and list the web site to the relevant country directories.
Best of luck!
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
-
Looking for opinions on structuring meta title tags/page title/menu title/H1
Hi everyone I am hoping a few of you can share your opinions. I have been having conversations (okay, healthy debates) about how to write/structure meta title tag and how to compliment them with the H1, page title, menu name. To help explain the thought processes I will use a pretend keyword. How about "screwdriver". Case: (I made this up) we are redesigning a website for a construction tools manufacturing company (pretend name: ABC Tools) targeting OEMs who are interested in purchasing large quantities of tools. The product categories (to become main menu items) are Screwdrivers, Nails, Drills, and Hammers. (bear with me .... this is just an example I am making up on the fly) K. Circling back to screwdrivers - let's say we have one landing page (a primary category page and in the main menu) listing products and great details about screwdrivers. Focus keywords are screwdriver manufacturer, screwdriver supplier, construction screwdrivers Below are questions being debated. If you are willing ... how would you address these questions? And, can you explain WHY? QUESTION ONE: How would you structure the meta title tag (feel free to write one of your own) Screwdriver Manufacturer - Construction Screwdriver | ABC Tools ABC Tools - US-based Screwdriver Manufacturer Supplier Near You High-Quality Screwdrivers for Construction with ABC Tools QUESTION TWO: how would you write the H1 on the page? Would it match the meta tag? OR, would you write something different using the primary keyword? QUESTION THREE Remembering this is not a blog post ... it is a primary landing page linked to the main navigation. What would the menu title be? (remember the product categories above are how the main menu items are bucketed) Screwdrivers Screwdriver Manufacturer Typically in WordPress, the H1 and the menu title is auto-populated using the page title (not the title tag)... So, if we use Screwdrivers as the page title but we want the H1 to match the meta title tag, would we manually change the H1? Or, have the page title and title tag match, but manually change the menu item?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brenda.Haines1 -
Should I put rel next and rel prev and canonical on tags pages
Hi I have a tag pages on a news website each tag page is divided to several pages, but Google does't crawled those pages because the links are in javaScript, I want to do the following things: Change the links to html href Add rel=pref rel=next Add a canonical in each page with the url of the main tag page Do you agree with my solution? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
Hreflang tag on links to alternate language site
Hey everyone! In the interest of trying to be brief, here's the situation in my favorite form of communication, bullet points! Client has two sites; one is in English and one is in Japanese Each site is a separate URL, no sub-domains or sub-pages Each main page on the English version of the site has a link to the homepage of the Japanese site Site has decent rankings overall, with room for improvement from page 2 to page 1 No Hreflang tags currently used in links to the Japanese version from the English version Given that the site isn't really suffering for most rankings, would this be helpful to implement on the English version? Ideally, I'd like each link to be updated to the corresponding subject matter of the Japanese, but in the interim it seems like identifying to Google that the link on the other side is a different language might be helpful to both the user and to maybe help those rankings on page two creep a little higher to page one. Thanks for reading, I appreciate your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
Pagination on a product page with reviews spread out on multiple pages
Our current product pages markup only have the canonical URL on the first page (each page loads more user reviews). Since we don't want to increase load times, we don't currently have a canonical view all product page. Do we need to mark up each subsequent page with its own canonical URL? My understanding was that canonical and rel next prev tags are independent of each other. So that if we mark up the middle pages with a paginated URL, e.g: Product page #1http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692"/>http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=2" />**Product page #2 **http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=2"/>http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692" />http://www.example.co.uk/Product.aspx?p=2692&pageid=3" />Would mean that each canonical page would suggest to google another piece of unique content, which this obviously isn't. Is the PREV NEXT able to "override" the canonical and explain to Googlebot that its part of a series? Wouldn't the canonical then be redundant?Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Don340 -
Optimum Word Count for Home Page Text
We operate a commercial real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) in New York City. Our home page text is about 500 words. Currently the home page text is of a promotional nature and not very engaging. We are attempting to write a check list for companies that are seeking to lease commercial space and make the text very useful, practical and engaging. However we are having difficulty covering all the bases with less than 1,000 words. If the home page text has 1,000-1,300 words is that detrimental from an SEO point of view? On the plus side I would think this would allow us to include several secondary keyword terms and to add plurals and variations of the two or three top phrases. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks, Alan Rosinsky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Why Is This Page Not Ranking?
Hi Mozzers, I can't rank (the page is nowhere on the Google grid that I can find) and I've not been able to move the needle at all on it. The page is http://www.lumber2.com/Western-Saddle-Pads-s/98.htm for keyword "western saddle pads." I'm inclined to think I'm cannabalizing the category with the products so I removed the word saddle from the majority of the product names on page. However, saddle pad or saddle pads is in the meta title for most if not all of the products. Do you think I'm cannabalizing with the product titles or is there something else going on? Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
Tags, categories or both?
There is so much debate regarding duplicate content, horror stories, losing visitors, being penalized, yada yada... that I am wandering if it's wise to use tags/categories on a WordPress blog. I saw that all major blogs are using these structuring etiquettes and they are all dofollow and meta robots on index, follow. What do you say? It is wise to use tags, categories or both? Should I nofollow them, noindex or follow and index? Or noindex follow? Cheers and thx.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin280