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 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:
Can I use hreflang in that case like:Many thanks in advance
-
Sure, I did this: http://bfy.tw/2hTu
-
Hi Dmitrii,
can you perhaps tell me the source, where you found the supported annotations above. Many Thanks
-
My answer is the correct. See what I replied above to Dmitrii
-
Lol! You're right. I was indeed thinking about Belgium and not Netherlands
-
It's a cultural thing. I'm that province of Italy people talk or Italian or German, so if you want to target both with your multilingual site you must tell it to Google with hreflang, even if it is not listed in the ISO chart.
you do the same for targeting Spanish speaking people in the usa, for instance.
-
Gianluca - I guess this time it's my turn: As far as I know they only have one official language in the Netherlands (Dutch) - I guess you refer to Belgium (3 official languages Dutch/French/German).
It's a common error to make this mistake - but the difference is easy to spot: Belgium is qualified for Euro '16 - unlike the Netherlands
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thank you for your reply. In fact I'm refering to that exact region. The difference to your CH examples are though, that in Switzerland, the 3 language regions are not the exact same "location".
In my case they are though so I got a bit confused.
So basically Im not saying, a specific region in Switzerland speaks French, another German and another Italian, but I say the exact same location/region speaks German and Italian.
-
Well, I do see the ones you mentioned on that list, but not it-it or de-it.
-
Yes, it exists (it is Alto Agide/South Tirol), and it's the same case of Netherlands (fr-NL and de-NL) or Switzerland (it-CH, fr-CH and de-CH)
-
Yes, you can.
-
Interesting. Google search doesn't return anything on this locale.
-
yes, sure about that
-
Are you sure that locale exists?
-
Hi Dmitrii,
many thanks for your reply. Great list, unfortunately I can't find my case. Though I think this list is not complete. E.x. I miss the the french speaking part in Italy for example,...
Helpful anyway though.
-
Hi there.
I found this list of all available locales, if locales you're trying to do are in this list, then go ahead, otherwise it won't work.
P.S. List might be old and updated by now, but i don't think so.
- af-ZA
- am-ET
- ar-AE
- ar-BH
- ar-DZ
- ar-EG
- ar-IQ
- ar-JO
- ar-KW
- ar-LB
- ar-LY
- ar-MA
- arn-CL
- ar-OM
- ar-QA
- ar-SA
- ar-SY
- ar-TN
- ar-YE
- as-IN
- az-Cyrl-AZ
- az-Latn-AZ
- ba-RU
- be-BY
- bg-BG
- bn-BD
- bn-IN
- bo-CN
- br-FR
- bs-Cyrl-BA
- bs-Latn-BA
- ca-ES
- co-FR
- cs-CZ
- cy-GB
- da-DK
- de-AT
- de-CH
- de-DE
- de-LI
- de-LU
- dsb-DE
- dv-MV
- el-GR
- en-029
- en-AU
- en-BZ
- en-CA
- en-GB
- en-IE
- en-IN
- en-JM
- en-MY
- en-NZ
- en-PH
- en-SG
- en-TT
- en-US
- en-ZA
- en-ZW
- es-AR
- es-BO
- es-CL
- es-CO
- es-CR
- es-DO
- es-EC
- es-ES
- es-GT
- es-HN
- es-MX
- es-NI
- es-PA
- es-PE
- es-PR
- es-PY
- es-SV
- es-US
- es-UY
- es-VE
- et-EE
- eu-ES
- fa-IR
- fi-FI
- fil-PH
- fo-FO
- fr-BE
- fr-CA
- fr-CH
- fr-FR
- fr-LU
- fr-MC
- fy-NL
- ga-IE
- gd-GB
- gl-ES
- gsw-FR
- gu-IN
- ha-Latn-NG
- he-IL
- hi-IN
- hr-BA
- hr-HR
- hsb-DE
- hu-HU
- hy-AM
- id-ID
- ig-NG
- ii-CN
- is-IS
- it-CH
- it-IT
- iu-Cans-CA
- iu-Latn-CA
- ja-JP
- ka-GE
- kk-KZ
- kl-GL
- km-KH
- kn-IN
- kok-IN
- ko-KR
- ky-KG
- lb-LU
- lo-LA
- lt-LT
- lv-LV
- mi-NZ
- mk-MK
- ml-IN
- mn-MN
- mn-Mong-CN
- moh-CA
- mr-IN
- ms-BN
- ms-MY
- mt-MT
- nb-NO
- ne-NP
- nl-BE
- nl-NL
- nn-NO
- nso-ZA
- oc-FR
- or-IN
- pa-IN
- pl-PL
- prs-AF
- ps-AF
- pt-BR
- pt-PT
- qut-GT
- quz-BO
- quz-EC
- quz-PE
- rm-CH
- ro-RO
- ru-RU
- rw-RW
- sah-RU
- sa-IN
- se-FI
- se-NO
- se-SE
- si-LK
- sk-SK
- sl-SI
- sma-NO
- sma-SE
- smj-NO
- smj-SE
- smn-FI
- sms-FI
- sq-AL
- sr-Cyrl-BA
- sr-Cyrl-CS
- sr-Cyrl-ME
- sr-Cyrl-RS
- sr-Latn-BA
- sr-Latn-CS
- sr-Latn-ME
- sr-Latn-RS
- sv-FI
- sv-SE
- sw-KE
- syr-SY
- ta-IN
- te-IN
- tg-Cyrl-TJ
- th-TH
- tk-TM
- tn-ZA
- tr-TR
- tt-RU
- tzm-Latn-DZ
- ug-CN
- uk-UA
- ur-PK
- uz-Cyrl-UZ
- uz-Latn-UZ
- vi-VN
- wo-SN
- xh-ZA
- yo-NG
- zh-CN
- zh-HK
- zh-MO
- zh-SG
- zh-TW
- zu-ZA
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
-
Should Hreflang x-default be on every page of every country for an International company?
UPDATED 4/29/2019 4:33 PM I had made to many copy and pastes. Product pages are corrected Upon researching the hreflang x-default tag, I am getting some muddy results for implementation on an international company site older results say just homepage or the country selector but…. My Question/Direction going forward for the International Site I am working on: I believe I can to put x-default all the pages of every country and point it to the default language page for areas that are not covered with our current sites. Is this correct? From my internet reading, the x-default on every page is not truly necessary for Google but it will be valid implemented. My current site setup example:
International SEO | | gravymatt-se
https://www.bluewidgets.com Redirects to https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as US/Global) Example Countries w/ code Site:- 4 countries/directories US/Global, France, Spain Would the code sample below be correct? https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ (functions as US/Global) US/Global Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ US/Global Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/whizzer-5001/ http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions for France) France Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/fr/fr/ France Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products- https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as Spain) Spain Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/ Spain Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 Thanks for the spot check Gravy0 -
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 -
International SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.
Hi! My UK based company just recently made the decision to let the US market operate their ecommerce business independently. Initially, both markets were operating off the same domain using sub-directories (i.e: www.brandname.com/en-us/ , www.brandname.com/en-gb/ ) Now that the US team have broken away from the domain - they are now using www.brandnameUSA.com while the UK continues to use www.brandname.com/en-gb/. The content is similar across both domains - however, the new US website has been able to consolidate several product variations onto single product pages where the UK website is using individual product pages for each variation. We have placed a geo-filter on the main domain which is 301 redirecting North American traffic looking for www.brandname.com to www.brandnameUSA.com However, since the domain change has taken place, product pages from the original domain are now indexing alongside the new US websites product pages in US search results. The UK website wants to be the default destination for all international traffic. My question is - how do we correctly setup hrlang tags across two separate TLDs and how do we handle a situation where multiple product pages on the "default" domain have been consolidated into one product page on the new USA domain? This is how we are currently handling it: "en-us" href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" /> href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" />
International SEO | | alexcbrands0 -
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.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
What are the best practices for translation of city/state names for international SEO? (ie. New York in English vs. Nueva York in Spanish)
I'm working on international SEO / translation of a global travel site. While we have a global keyword research and translation strategy in process for each market they serve, I've run into a unique question. Overall, we are translating (and localizing) content for each market but aren't sure what to do with location names. Each country/state has cities and locations that have their own dedicated pages. I see three options for these location names (when titling a page and writing content): keep them in English, translate the names in the market languages, or use a combination of the two. The challenge with altering the location names to the market languages is that they are truly not known by those names. Though there are some instances where it may make sense…for instance **New York **in Spanish would be "Nueva York" with **‘**Nueva' being the Spanish translation of ‘new’. There are other instances, where no translation exists. If you’ve had a similar experience I'd love to hear your approach/recommendation.
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
Multiple hreflang tags
I'm trying to advise on the multi country seo for a site in terms of markup. We've already decided on using sub folders rather than separate sites or subdomains due to an established link profile and good rankings in all countries. The question is in relation to the homepage. Obviously this is the page most likely to rank well in any country (the site is a .com). But can multiple hreflang tags be put on the page to say that the page targets many countries? Or would leaving the hreflang tag off allow it to just rank for all countries? Also do Yahoo and Bing follow hreflang tags? I can't find any info on this anywhere! Thanks very much in advance for any help!
International SEO | | Bdig0 -
Website Translation
Hi All, I know its not an SEO question, but....................... Can anyone suggest a few good website translation "widgets" I would like to give those who are not fluent in English and option to choose another language in which to view the page text. Thank You!!!
International SEO | | APICDA0