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.
Hreflang in vs. sitemap?
-
Hi all,
I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time. I also like the idea of having leaner markup.
However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb. I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb.
Does the sitemap file size matter? GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine.
Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap?
Thanks,
-Eugene
-
I have always preferred in the sitemap because it keeps potential lines of code off your page. Everything helps when it comes to page speed.
However, if it's easier for you to put the tags on page, that's is completely valid. Do whatever is easiest to maintain and update.
-
First off if you want to keep the sitemap file, consider breaking it down to multiple files, one for each language/country etc...
Also FYI there are THREE methods, you can also add hreflang to the http header. This might be a good options as well to consider.
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
-
Structured data: Product vs auto rental schema?
Hi mozzers, If you are rental company, is it useful to add both the product and auto rental schemas or auto rental schema on its own should just be enough? Finally, on the auto rental schema, you have to add an address. Could we just add a city instead of an entire address and avoid receiving a warning message on the strutured data testing tool? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19860 -
Which search engines should we submit our sitemap to?
Other than Google and Bing, which search engines should we submit our sitemap to?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NicheSocial0 -
Google News Sitemap in Different Languages
Thought I'd ask this question to confirm what I already think. I'm curious that if we're publishing something in two language and both are verified by the publishing center if the group would recommend publishing two separate Google News Sitemaps (one in each language) or publishing one in each language.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Sitemap with homepage URL repeated several times - it is a problem?
Hello Mozzers, I am looking at a website with the homepage repeated several times (4 times) on the sitemap (sitemap is autogenerated via a plugin) - is this an SEO problem do you think - might it damage SEO performance, or can I ignore this issue? I am thinking I can ignore, yet it's an odd "issue" so your advice would be welcome! Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
:Pointing hreflang to a different domain
Hi all, Let's say I have two websites: www.mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.de - they share a lot of content but the main categories and URLs are almost always different. Am I right in saying I can't just set the hreflang tag on every page of www.mywebsite.com to read: rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de' /> That just won't do anything, right? Am I also right in saying that the only way to use hreflang properly across two domains is to have a customer hreflang tag on every page that has identical content translated into German? So for this page: www.mywebsite.com/page.html my hreflang tag for the german users would be: <link < span="">rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de/page.html' /></link <> Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
301 vs 410 redirect: What to use when removing a URL from the website
We are in the process of detemining how to handle URLs that are completely removed from our website? Think of these as listings that have an expiration date (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/test-prep/tphU3/sat-group-course). What is the best practice for removing these listings (assuming not many people are linking to them externally). 301 to a general page (i.e. http://www.noodle.org/search/test-prep) Do nothing and leave them up but remove from the site map (as they are no longer useful from a user perspective) return a 404 or 410?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abargmann0 -
Urls missing from product_cat sitemap
I'm using Yoast SEO plugin to generate XML sitemaps on my e-commerce site (woocommerce). I recently changed the category structure and now only 25 of about 75 product categories are included. Is there a way to manually include urls or what is the best way to have them all indexed in the sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kisen0 -
Help - .ie vs .co.uk in google uk
We have a website that for years has attracted a high level of organic searches and had a very high level of links. It has the .ie extension (Ireland) and did very well when competing in the niche market it is in on google.co.uk. We have the same domain name but in .co.uk format and basically redirected traffic to it when people typed in .co.uk instead. Since the latest panda update, we have noticed that the number of visits organically has dropped to a quarter of what it was and this is continuing to go down. We have also noticed that the .ie version is no longer listed in google and has been replaced by .co.uk. As we've never exchanged or submitted links for the .co.uk domain this means there are only links indexed in google. Is there any way I can get google to re-index the site using the .ie domain rather than the .co.uk domain? I am hemorrhaging sales now and becoming a much more withdrawn person by the day!!! PS - the .co.uk domain is set up as a domain alias in plesk with both .ie and .co.uk domain dns pointing to the the same IP address. Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rufo
Steve0