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.
What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
-
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site.
Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page?
Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish).
Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc...
Sitemap example for English website URL:
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url>Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url>Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!
-
Sorry for viewing this just now... but - forgive me if I am wrong due to a bad understanding of the question - but I think Tom answer is not correct.
You are telling that your main site is in English, but that has also a Spanish subdomain with just half of it localized in Spanish.
If this is the correct interpretation of the origin of your doubts, than, in the Spanish subdomain the hreflang should be implemented so:
IN CASE OF SPANISH SUBDOMAIN URL WITH SPANISH CONTENT
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
IN CASE OF SPANISH SUBDOMAIN URL WITH ENGLISH CONTENT
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
Why? Because those "en" and "es" mean "English Language" and "Spanish Language", so you cannot declare as Spanish something that Spanish is not. As well you cannot declare both URLs as to shown to English speaking users, because that would create an hiccup to Google, who would not know what of the two it has to finally show to English speaking users.
More over, if you don't want to extend the use of the hreflang suggesting also the countries where to show some given URL, then you should canonicalize the spanish.domain.com URL with English content to the original www.domain.com URL.
The idea of using also the country code ISO could solve - somehow - this issue, because writing something like this:
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
Then you will be telling Google to show the spanish.domain.com URL to the people using english in Spain (Google.es), and the English one to all the people speaking English in the rest of world.
Be aware, though, that Spanish people using Spanish will see in the www.domain.com URL in their Google.es SERPs, because the x-default is telling Google that all the people not using the language indicated in the hreflang="x-X" annotation (which is English), will have to see the main domain URL, and not the spanish subdomain one.
Hreflang is quite a sudoku, but it is extremely logic.
-
Thanks Tom for your input and feedback.
-
Hi,
To answer your first question, using hreflang tags in your sitemaps is a perfectly fine implementation of the tags, they will work whether they’re coded into the of each page, set in the sitemap or set in HTTP headers. This page will be useful for you as it explains all three methods quite well: http://www.branded3.com/blogs/implementing-hreflang-tag/
But when you add them to your sitemap you should include all variations of the page, along with a default – so if a French or German searcher accesses your site, you can define whether they’ll be served the Spanish or English page, like this:
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
To answer your second question about countries, you are fine to use hreflang=”es” to define all Spanish traffic, but using country codes can be useful in some circumstances. For instance if you have a site talking about football, you could use hreflang=”en-us” for a page which refers to the game as ‘soccer’ and use hreflang=”en-gb” for the page calling it ‘football’.
This Google Webmaster support post explains using both quite well under ‘Supported language values’ which I recommend you take a look at as well: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that helps,
Tom
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
-
Advise on the right way to block country specific users but not block Googlebot - and not be seen to be cloaking. Help please!
Hi, I am working on the SEO of an online gaming platform - a platform that can only be accessed by people in certain countries, where the games and content are legally allowed.
International SEO | | MarkCanning
Example: The games are not allowed in the USA, but they are allowed in Canada. Present Situation:
Presently when a user from the USA visits the site they get directed to a restricted location page with the following message: RESTRICTED LOCATION
Due to licensing restrictions, we can't currently offer our services in your location. We're working hard to expand our reach, so stay tuned for updates! Because USA visitors are blocked Google which primarily (but not always) crawls from the USA is also blocked, so the company webpages are not being crawled and indexed. Objective / What we want to achieve: The website will have multiple region and language locations. Some of these will exist as standalone websites and others will exist as folders on the domain. Examples below:
domain.com/en-ca [English Canada]
domain.com/fr-ca [french Canada]
domain.com/es-mx [spanish mexico]
domain.com/pt-br [portugese brazil]
domain.co.in/hi [hindi India] If a user from USA or another restricted location tries to access our site they should not have access but should get a restricted access message.
However we still want google to be able to access, crawl and index our pages. Can i suggest how do we do this without getting done for cloaking etc? Would this approach be ok? (please see below) We continue to work as the present situation is presently doing, showing visitors from the USA a restricted message.
However rather than redirecting these visitors to a restricted location page, we just black out the page and show them a floating message as if it were a model window.
While Googlebot would be allowed to visit and crawl the website. I have also read that it would be good to put paywall schema on each webpage to let Google know that we are not cloaking and its a restricted paid page. All public pages are accessible but only if the visitor is from a location that is not restricted Any feedback and direction that can be given would be greatly appreciated as i am new to this angle of SEO. Sincere thanks,0 -
Multilang site: Auto redirect 301 or 302?
We need to establish if 301 or 302 response code is to be used for our auto redirects based on Accept-Language header. https://domain.com
International SEO | | fJ66doneOIdDpj
30x > https://domain.com/en
30x > https://domain.com/ru
30x > https://domain.com/de The site architecture is set up with proper inline HREFLANG.
We have read different opinions about this, Ahrefs says 302 is the correct one:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/301-vs-302-redirects/
302 redirect:
"You want to redirect users to the right version of the site for them (based on location/language)." You could argue that the root redirect is never permanent as it varies based on user language settings (302)
On the other hand, the lang specific redirects are permanent per language: IF Accept-Language header = en
https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/en
IF Accept-Language header = ru
https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/ru So each of these is 'permanent'. So which is the correct?0 -
Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?
My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Spanish word as English domain name
hi anyine any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name. other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names. thanks
International SEO | | Arropa0 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
Sub-domains or sub-directories for country-specific versions of the site?
What approach do you think would be better from an SEO perspective when creating country-targeted versions for an eCommerce site (all in the same language with slight regional changes) - sub-domains or sub-directories? Is any of the approaches more cost effective, web development-wise? I know this topic's been under much debate and I would really like to hear your opinion. Many thanks!
International SEO | | ramarketing0 -
Which hreflang tag to use for .eu domain
Hi there, We're trying to solve a problem with one of our domains, we have a .eu CCTLD and we're trying to implement hreflang tags. On our US and UK sites, we use "en-us" and "en-gb", but it's not clear how to approach this european problem, as there is not a "en-eu" tag. The site is in English, but serves several European countries speaking different languages. What's the best hreflang code to use in this situation? Any help much appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | dennis.globalsign0 -
Spanglish? Picking keywords for an English website with a Spanish speaking search demographic
I'm putting together meta data for an English website whose target search demographic is the Hispanic market. The website has a Spanish translation as well. When I entered the website into the Google Adwords keyword tool to begin doing keyword research, all keywords returned to me were in Spanish. I am unsure if the meta data keywords I'm preparing for the page should be in Spanish despite the fact that I am preparing the meta data for the English version. Moreover, should there be any mixed Spanish English (Spanglish?) keywords as users might be searching under the English search but in Spanish or with queries that are partially in Spanish?
International SEO | | IMM0