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 tag on every page?
-
Hello Moz Community,
I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/.
- For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a
- For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated)
From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags:
/>
For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
-
HI!
As the previous answer says, you must always present all the countries and languages (or just languages) related hreflang annotations as many are the multicountry/multilingual version of your site.
So your own first question (My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page?) is the correct answer.
-
Hi there!
Yes, if you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page must identify all language versions, including itself. If you add any more languages or regions later, all pages will have to refer to that new language and itself also.
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
-
Why Doesn't Google Use My Title Tag and Meta Description?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, Need your URGENT help! We set an optimised title & meta description for our client websites. These titles are approved by our clients. Before somedays, they checked on Google, noticed the title & meta description were not the same. Next moment, they notified me about this issue. The title & meta description looks fine when I checked the source code. So, why Google use title & meta description differently? For example: Title approved by client: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer - Yeo & Associates LLC
International SEO | | Verz
Google set our title: Yeo & Associates LLC: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer Title approved by client: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore | DivorceBureau®
Google set our title: DivorceBureau®: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore Title approved by client: Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore | Foodtalks
Google set our title: Foodtalks - Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore Title approved by client: Child Care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool | Carpe Diem
Google set our title: Carpe Diem: Child care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool Every day, they are requesting me to update Google's title with their approved title. Also, asking me these questions.
Why did this happen?
Why didn't set their recommended title? Is there any way to set our approved titles? Please, help me to find the solution. ASAP Thanks in advance!0 -
Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags
Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
GeoIP Redirects & hreflang
Hello, We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects. Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects. We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory. However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path. My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market. Thanks.
International SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Hreflang Alternate & Pagination
Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.
International SEO | | ABullis0 -
Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working
Hi There, Just wondering if you can help. Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages. Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing. When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions. However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem. I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work. Has anyone had anything similar happen? I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates. I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors. Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot. Thanks, Ro
International SEO | | romh0 -
Is there any reason to get a massive decrease on indexed pages?
Hi, I'm helping on SEO for a big e-commerce in LatAm and one thing we've experienced during the last months is that our search traffic had reduced and the indexed pages had decreased in a terrible way. The site had over 2 Million indexed pages (which was way too much, since we believe that around 10k would be more than enough to hold the over 6K SKUs) but now this number has decreased to less than 3K in less than 2 months. I've also noticed that most of the results in which the site is still appearing are .pdf or .doc files but not actual content on the website. I've checked the following: Robots (there is no block, you can see that on the image as well) Webmaster Tools Penalties Duplicated content I don't know where else to look for. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance! cpLwX1X
International SEO | | mat-relevance0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0