Hreflang Implementation
-
Hello All,
I'm currently working on a website with different folders for different country. For now I have defined the href lang implementation as below:
http://www.homepage.com/en/default.html"/>
Language: English - Country: United Kingdomhttp://www.homepage.com/enus/default.html"/>
Language: English - Country: United Stateshttp://www.homepage.com/nl/default.html"/>
Language: Dutch - Country: Netherlandshttp://www.homepage.com/nlbe/default.html"/>
Language: Dutch - Country: Belgiumhttp://www.homepage.com/fr/default.html"/>
Language: French - Country: All french speaking countrieshttp://www.homepage.com/de/default.html"/>
Language: German - Country: All german speaking countrieshttp://www.homepage.com/es/camisa-a-medida.html"/>
Language: Spanish - Country: Spainhttp://www.homepage.com/enen/default.html" />
Language: English - Country: All other countriesDoes this make any sense?
Furthermore, how do I implement this on underlying pages. Do I fill out the URL dynamically according to the URL the tags are found on? Or do I use these tags mentioning the homepage on all underlying pages? If so, how do I avoid duplicate content issues between NL and NL-BE and EN-GB, EN-US and EN? Canonicals?
Besides the whole hreflang implementation I was wondering if it's worthwhile or advisable to implement lang="en" xml:lang="en_"_ in the HTML tag and http-equiv="content-language" content="en_"_ in the META tags?
-
Hi Bulserik
regarding those two questions, if we look just at Google, they are not taken into consideration by Google for International SEO.
On the other:
- because they don't harm a site;
- because they are used by Bing for geolocalization and geotargeting (Bing does not use the hreflang)
then, it is a good idea using them.
Check this old but still valid post on Bing about how to geotarget for them: http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-websites-country-and-language/
Finally, just to be sure:
remember to create Google Webmaster Tools profile for each subfolder and geotarget them for their corresponding countries.
-
No one able to help me out on this one?
-
Great, thanks. I'm afraid I'm on ISS though so have to see how to get that working. I understand from your answer the correct way of doing this is by implementing a dynamic URL in the hreflang tag and not just the homepage.
Besides the technical implementation you explained above, I'm assuming the way I segmented the site is okay right?
After that I still have this part unsolved: Besides the whole hreflang implementation I was wondering if it's worthwhile or advisable to implement lang="en"xml:lang="en" in the HTML tag and http-equiv="content-language" content="en" in the META tags?
-
Assuming you're on an Apache server, this works for internal pages:
" hreflang="x-default" />
" hreflang="en-au" />
" hreflang="en-ca" />The REQUEST_URI will pull the internal page you're on (so if you're /about, then it will add /about to all 3 hreflang tags. I don't know if (but I think) this won't work on IIS servers. Just a thought if it doesn't seem to work.
Assuming your folder structure stays the same, you should be all set.
And once you're done, test it using Flang.
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
-
Canonical or hreflang?
I have four English sites for four different countries, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and I want to share some content between the sites. On the pages that share the content, which is essentially exactly the same on all 4 sites, do I use the hreflang tags like: or do I add a canonical tag to the other three pointing to the "origin", which would be the UK site? I believe it is best practice to use one or the other, but I'm not sure which make sense in this situation.
Technical SEO | | andrew-mso0 -
Google Search Console and User-declared canonical is actually Hreflang tag
Hey, We recently launched a US version of UK based ecommerce website on the us.example.com subdomain. Both websites are on Shopify so canonical tags are handled automatically and we have implemented Hreflang tags across both websites. Suddenly our rankings in the UK have dropped and after looking in search console for the UK site ive found that a lot of pages are now no longer indexed in Google because the User-declared canonical is the Hreflang tag for the US URL. Below is an example https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet - is the product page is the canonical tag rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-gb" /> - UK hreflang tag rel="alternate" href="https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-us" /> - US Hreflang tag then in Google search console the user-defined canonical is https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet but it should be https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet The UK website has been assigned to target the United Kingdom in Search Console and the US website has been assigned to target the United States. We also do not have access to robots.txt file unfortunately. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | PeterRubber0 -
Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
Technical SEO | | lauralou82
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt We've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US. They have the following hreflang tags across all pages: We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously). Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all. Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location. Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?0 -
Setting up hreflang tags
Hi everyone, A quick question about setting up your Hreflang tags. Here you can see 2 examples: As you can see, the order of the elements is different. Be aware, there is a tiny difference between the 2: the first Hreflang is written for a specific language in a specific country, the second one only contains a language code. Is this the reason why the order is different or is this just a coincidence and doesn't the order of the elements matter at all? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
How does link juice flow through hreflang?
We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CuriosityMedia0 -
Using hreflang tags properly.
On my site "example.com" I have set up the following in the header: The problem is that the tags are universal across the site, so every page has these tags, leading obviously to no return tag errors. I.e. the page www.example.ca/testing.html still has the tags: Not tags with "testing.html" in them. How bad is this? Does it matter?
Technical SEO | | absoauto0 -
SEO question: Need help on rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Hi all, we have webcontent in 3 languages (official belgian yellow pages), we use a separate domain per language, these are also our brands.
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
ex. for the restaurant Wagamamahttp://www.goudengids.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to nl-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to fr-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to en-be The trouble is that sometimes I see the incorrect urls appearing when doing a search in google, ex. when searching on google.be (dutch=nederlands=nl-be) I see the www.pagesdor.be version appearing (french) I was trying to find a fix for this within https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=nl , but this only seems to apply to websites which use SUBdomains for language purposes. I'm not sure if can work for DOMAINS. Can anyone help me out? Kind regards0 -
Implement rel canonical on a Blogspot blog
Does anyone know how to implement a rel canonical tag on a Blogspot blog? I am trying to pass link juice from an old Blogspot blog to a self-hosted website.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs0