Sitemap for multilanguage website
-
Hello sorry silly question but prefer to be sure
I have an international website with different subfolders
- .com/es
- .com
- .com/fr
- etc
All of them have independant sitemap, but i'd like to add in .com/robot.txt a sitemap with language.
Do you know how I can do this ?
Tks a lot !
-
Tks u !
-
Hi there,
Ah, I see what you mean.
You can certainly add these sitemap links to the .com's robots.txt file. I don't believe there is syntax to specify language for this though - if you look at large multinational sites like Adobe.com, you can see their multitude of sitemaps below their disallowed files: http://www.adobe.com/robots.txt
Microsoft's is similar: http://www.microsoft.com/robots.txt
I'd say you're safe enough to link like this - the sitemap will be accessed, plus if you have used hreflang tags and geo-targeted the subfolders in Webmaster Tools, Google will understand that it's looking at maps / content for a specific language.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hello
Sorry did not explain properly
In a robot.txt we can add a link to the sitemap and specify the language of each sitemap. Was just wondering if someones knows the syntaxe to use.
-
Hi there,
Sorry, I'm a little lost - what is it that you're preparing to do ("add in .com/robot.txt a sitemap with language")? Would you be able to rephrase? I'm not quite sure what you mean by this.
Cheers,
Jane
-
No news ?
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
-
Multi Regional Website Best Practices
Hi there, I have a website that is targeting 3 countries AU/US & NZ. I have set up hreflang tags for each page on each of the site however I am having difficulties getting it work right. I read this article which was a great insight into the hreflang tags. https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights and as a result I have implemented hreflang tags in the following manner: When users access the root domain http://[website] it will redirect the user to their locale with a 302 redirect. I have a few questions:
International SEO | | nathanfranklin
1. When building my external link profiles, I'm not sure if I should be building link profiles for http://[website]/ or for the geo graphical pages (http://[website]/aus/ etc..). Note that the http://[website]/ is never used, it just issues a 302 to the actual geographical location. 2. It seems that the hreflang tags are not working correctly. Perhaps its the result of the 302 on the root page, but in google.com.au (using the link http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=au&pws=0&q=[branded search]) I would expect that I should see the search results for /aus/ given the fact that the hreflang tags are setup as en-au. Instead I am seeing the root domain page. Is that correct or should it be showing all the pages with /aus/. ALSO If I do a search in google thailand (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=th&pws=0&q=[branded search]) it returns the /aus/ version where it should be showing the /us/ using the x-default hreflang tag. In google webmaster tools I have setup 4 site profiles:
http://[website]/
http://[website]/us/
http://[website]/aus/ (Targeted to Australia)
http://[website]/nz/ (Targeted to New Zealand) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Nathan1 -
Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?
My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky. What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
Can we use similar images on multi regional websites?
I have couple of questions regarding multi regional websites. Right now, We're working on http://www.canvaschamp.com/ and planning to design new website for Australia region. I have read Google's official guidelines regarding duplicate content on following URL. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en Now, I have biggest question regarding images and videos. We're going to use all photo gallery images on Australia website. http://www.canvaschamp.com/canvas-prints We may use similar name, title tag, meta description for all images. So, Will it work for us? I want to save my website from duplicate content penalty. I am looking forward for any additional help which may help me to perform better on different region with similar images.
International SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
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.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
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, Maëlle0 -
Backlinks to URLs with Language Parameters (for Chinese version of website) and SEO?
Hey all, We run a large eCommerce site in Australia and are preparing to launch to the Chinese market. Our site has been fully converted to Chinese and displays the version of the site detected as default in the user's browser unless they manually select otherwise. This is done by appending the parameter "?la=zh" onto the end of the URL, so for example the Chinese version would be: **www.example.com/australia?la=zh ** This then forces the product catalogue to display the relevant language version. My question is, for SEO purposes and back links in particular, since they aren't really a "true URL" (i.e: strictly speaking they aren't different "pages", just the same page being populated with different characters), would getting links from Chinese websites to the URL "www.example.com/australia?la=zh" really be viewed as any different from just "www.example.com/australia"? Do they pass the same amount of juice and is the difference detected by the engines (thinking mainly about Baidu in particular but of course Google as well)? Feedback from anyone with experience in SEO for multi-lingual sites would be much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
Multi-National Website Demarcation in Organic Search
We launched our business in the UK many years ago using a .com domain and have built up good link equity back to our www site. Last year, we launched the same business in the US and host the US site on a "us." sub domain. We have used Google Webmaster Tools to demarcate the two websites so that the www site is set to target the UK and the "us." sub domain is set to target the US. Our organic search results from Google UK for the UK business are fine but when our US customers Google brand terms the www UK site takes precedence in organic search. To complicate this further, the sitelinks within the search results include a mixture of pages from the www UK site and the "us." US site. Google clearly has some difficulty understanding that the two sites are for two different geographic audiences. We have a good relationship with Google and they have indicated (with appropriate disclaimers) that we might consider aligning the URL structures for both sites to reduce the precedence that the www site currently receives. The www home page will become an International portal and the UK and US URL structures will be aligned. We have two options: Change both sites to subdomains so that we have "uk.xxxxx.com" and "us.xxxxx.com" linked to an International portal at the www subdomain Use sub folders so that we have "www.xxxxx.com/uk/" and "www.xxxxx.com/us/" again linked from the www subdomain We're comfortable with use of 301 redirects and canonicals to change the structure in a search engine friendly way but cannot agree internally whether sub domains or sub folders is the way to go. Unfortunately we're to far down the line to seperate by tld. Anyone have a strong opinion on the best approach? Thanks, Jeremy
International SEO | | www.webuyanycar.com0 -
How well does Google's crawlers understand foreign websites?
I speak 5 languages and therefore have the opportunity to do on-page SEO and content writing for 5 different cultures. This question to me has much to do with the way Google translator works. It doesn't, trust me! Which then makes me wonder how the web crawlers, which are designed with English in mind, can fairly and equally attribute the same ranking points to a foreign website. Since Google seems to use sematic search technology I'm wondering if foreign sites have it easier or not. Any ideas?
International SEO | | MassivePrime0 -
Am I doing this right? Same website, content and similar domains.
I have 5 sites with the same exact content. I have a separate webmastertool for each one and I have targeted them to each country on WebMastertools? Iam I missing something or did I do it right.Thankswww.abc.com (USA)www.abc.com.ar (argentina)www.abc.com.mx (mexico)www.abc.com.co (colombia)
International SEO | | M_80
