Hreflang/Canonical Inquiry for Website with 29 different languages
-
Hello,
So I have a website (www.example.com) that has 29 subdomains (es.example.com, vi.example.com, it.example.com, etc).
Each subdomain has the exact same content for each page, completely translated in its respective language.
I currently do not have any hreflang/canonical tags set up.
I was recently told that this (below) is the correct way to set these tags up
-For each subdomain (es.example.com/blah-blah for this example), I need to place the hreflang tag pointing to the page the subdomain is on (es.example.com/blah-blah), in addition to every other 28 subdomains that have that page (it.example.com/blah-blah, etc). In addition, I need to place a canonical tag pointing to the main www. version of the website. So I would have 29 hreflang tags, plus a canonical tag.
When I brought this to a friends attention, he said that placing the canonical tag to the main www. version would cause the subdomains to drop out of the SERPs in their respective country search engines, which I obviously wouldn't want to do.
I've tried to read articles about this, but I end up always hitting a wall and further confusing myself. Can anyone help? Thanks!
-
_For each subdomain (es.example.com/blah-blah for this example), I need to place the hreflang tag pointing to the page the subdomain is on (es.example.com/blah-blah), in addition to every other 28 subdomains that have that page (it.example.com/blah-blah, etc). In addition, I need to place a canonical tag pointing to the main www. version of the website. So I would have 29 hreflang tags, plus a canonical tag. _
Everything correct but the canonical part (but maybe I misunderstood what you wrote).
If the different country targeting pages are in different languages, then you don't have to point the rel="canonical" to the main www. version. NOT AT ALL, because they are not identical. You will start seeing the search snippets of the URLs of those geo-targeted versions (shown because of the hreflang) using the title tag and meta description of the www. version page. So, for instance, the search snippet of the Italian version having the Italian URL but everything else in English. If you need to use the rel="canonical" it should be self-referential (if not another in same cases, but of the same subdomain)
-
Hi,
Probably the easiest solution in your case is to use the geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster tools (but only if each of your subdomains is targeting a specific country - not a specific language).
If you want to use hreflang - there is quite a good post on it on Moz (http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights) - must admit I personally never used it.
rgds,
Dirk
-
If your translations are automated, Google requests that you don't index them, but it sounds like you've created fully translated, static pages. Here's Google's info on that, "Q: Can I use automated translations?
A: Yes, but they must be blocked from indexing with the “noindex” robots meta tag. We consider automated translations to be auto-generated content, so allowing them to be indexed would be a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines." Maybe this is where someone had confusion... Anyways, here's their larger FAQ on it: https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation. Fully done translations are considered canonical within their own languages, so no need to point to the www version as canonical.
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
-
Our forum links are redirecting to high spammy & NSFW sites: Any impact on main website?
Hi all, We have a discussion forum like subdomain.website.com. Some spammers have created many links with our subdomain URL which are redirecting to high spammy and NSFW sites (Not sure how they did). We are trying to stop the redirects. So far many visitors and bots have recorded visits to these spammy sites with our URL. Will this impact our website anyhow ? I noticed that our website spam score has been increased and not sure if this is coincidental or penalized. Ranking even dropped without manual actions. I wonder how much of this subdomain activity will impact main website? Please advise.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
New Flurry of thousands of bad links from 3 Spammy websites. Disavow?
I also discovered that a website www.prlog.ru put 32 links to my website. It is a russian site. It has a 32% spam score. Is that high? I think I need to disavow. Another spammy website link has spam score of 16% with with several thousand links. I added one link to the site medexplorer.com 6 years ago and it was fine. Now it has thousands of links. Should I disavow all three?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
What is the difference between the two rewrite rules in htaccess?
Force www. prefix in URLs and redirect non-www to www RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com.ph
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | esiow2013
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com.ph/$1 [R=301,L] Force www. prefix in URLs and redirect non-www to www - 2nd option RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com.ph [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com.ph/$1 [R=301,L]0 -
Affiliate Website Slapping
Hi There I recently launched a very large website - rich in good quality content, nice design and good onsite SEO. The website is a 100 + pages and gives the user informative content. In terms of SEO and linking building - a few guest posts, PR's and directories have been submitted. All links have been relevant and quality. No spam links used at all and the number of links submitted has been very low. Only a handful.. We have seen a significant drop in rankings and I am scratching my head as to why. My worry is that Google has slapped us for having an affiliate link on the website. Each page - except the homepage has one advert on them. The advert includes an affiliate link. Does anyone have any recent experience of affiliate websites been slapped? Can anyone help??? Much Appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
My Website Just Got Penalized
I had a website that recently got penalized. The pagerank dropped to zero on the homepage and moved to page 200 on google. I checked manual actions on my site in web mastertools and it says that no webspam is found. I am curious to find out why my website would drop. I had a a network of 5 blogs that I was linking to the site that also lost page rank but theres is N/A now. I am thinking thats where the trouble started because i did not use no follow. Question 1 My question is if I remove all the links to the other site or make them no follow will the penalty lift. I am thinking that the penalty is an automated on and not a manual one. Does any one have experience with automated penalties? Did they lift after you fixed the issues. Did you regain most of your original rankings? Question 2 What happens to all my blogs. I spent all lot of money on have posts written for it. Can any of the content be salvaged. I have over 1000 pages written on 5 different blogs. I can send you a list of the urls so you can see what I am talking about.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Blogger Reviews w/ Links - Considered a Paid Link?
As part of my daily routine, I checked out inbound.org and stumbled upon an article about Grey Hat SEO techniques. One of the techniques mentioned was sending product to a blogger for review. My question is whether these types of links are really considered paid links. Why shouldn't an e-commerce company evangelize its product by sending to bloggers whose readership is the demographic the company is trying to target? In pre e-commerce marketing, it was very typical for a start-up company to send samples for review. Additionally, as far as flow of commerce is concerned, it makes sense for a product review to direct the reader to the company, whether by including a contact phone number, a mailing address, or in today's e-commerce world, a link to their website. I understand the gaming potential here (as with most SEO techniques, black-hat is usually an extreme implementation), but backlinks from honest product reviews shouldn't have a tinge of black, thus keeping it white-hat. Am I wrong here? Are these types of links really grey? Any help or insight is much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | b40040400 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Melia0 -
Single Domain With Different Pages Deep Linking To Different Pages On External Domain
I've been partaking in an extensive trial study and will be releasing the results soon, however I do have quite a strong indication to the answer to this question but would like to see what everyone else thinks first, to see where the common industry mindset is at. Let's say SiteA.com/page1.html is PR5 and links out to SiteB.com/page1.html This of course would count as a valuable backlink. Now, what would happen if SiteA.com/page2.html, which is also PR5, links out to SiteB.com/page2.html ? The link from SiteA is coming from a different page, and is also pointing to a different deeplink on SiteB, however it will contain the same IP address. What would the benefit be for having multiple deeplinks in this way (as outlined above, please read it carefully before responding) as opposed to having just a single deeplink from the domain? If a benefit does exist, then does the benefit start to become trivial? This has nothing to do with sitewide links. Serious answers only please.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stevenheron1