International SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.

[alexcbrands]

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" />

[gfiorelli1]

You are using bad the x-default annotation (I must admit, though, that I did not completely understood the code you copy/pasted in your question).

The x-default is meant for showing to Google what URL to show to those users, who are not explicitly targeted by a dedicated version of the website.

For instance, if we are targeting both USA and UK, but we know that the USA version has traction also in other countries like AU, NZ, South Africa and Spain, then we could use the x-default so to suggest Google that the USA URLs should be shown to all people independently of the language (in my example, not only English speaking users, but also Spanish speaking ones) and geography (not only the USA, but also all the others countries). The only exception will be the UK, because with the hreflang="en-GB" we are telling Google to shown the UK version of the site to English speaking users in Great Britain.

The only solution I see in your case is consistency between the two versions. You must choose with which architecture option to go and use just that. Only after you should think in the hreflang implementation.

[alexcbrands]

Hi Dirk,

Thank you for your response. The US team has implemented the hreflang tags at the homepage level but not at the product and internal page level for the reasons you mention. The UK team however HAS implemented hreflang tags across all their pages and is designating the "brandname.com/en-gb/" site as the x-default AND the alternate for general EN language.

Curious to know your thoughts on this approach and how you would implement.

Thanks,

Alex

[DirkC]

The solution you propose is not going to work. Hreflang is used to identify different language versions of the same page (with minor variations). This implies that each page has a one to one relation with it's equivalent in the other languages.

This isn't the case on your site - the category pages on your US site do not correspond with the category pages on the en-gb site - you can't use the hreflang here (1 page US = 3 pages in en-gb).

You could do this on homepage, product pages and all pages that are more or less equivalent in all languages.

Please also note that hreflang is reciprocal - if you have following hreflang's

you have to put this code on both pages - on http://www.brandname.com/en-gb/product-a & https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/product-a  - it's no use to only put it on the en-gb version as you currently do.

I also have doubts about "es-mx" for a site which is in entirely in English.

Dirk