Is this setup of Hreflang xml sitemap correct?
-
Hi,
I'm trying to setup hreflang for 2 domains. One is purely a US site and the other domain has the language-country as subdomains.
For example:
http://www.websiteUSA.com (Targets English - USA)
https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA (Targets English - Canada)
https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA (Targets French - Canada)
https://www.websiteINT/es (Targets Spanish)
..and so on and so forth for about 12 of these international URLs.
I created an XML sitemap that looks something like this:
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><url><loc>http://www.websiteUSA.com</loc></url></urlset>
<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA</loc></url>
Question 1: Is this correct? In my actual file, I have all the countries listed and self-referencing.
Question 2: I'm hosting this file at https://www.websiteINT.com/hreflang.xml AND at http://www.websiteUSA.com/hreflang.xml. Is this correct?
Question 3: Will this help the SERPs direct english speakers from the US to http://www.websiteUSA.com while show SERPs for say English Speakers in Canada to https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA?
Question 4: For some reason, when I put up the xml site, it only listed each URL once instead of the full XML file. Should I have uploaded a text file instead? It doesn't seem to render correctly.
Thank you!
-
Hi Gianluca, thanks for chiming in!
I will look into getting this setup. Should this solve our issue? It seems that currently, the hreflang setup for just the home page isn't working. Google is not showing the US site in Google US or showing the appropriate international site for Google in that specific country.
Any other tips? Hreflang setup for HTML will have to be applied for all pages, for all country-language sites, correct? Where does the canonical point to?
Lastly, if all of this is setup, do I remove country geo-targeting in Search Console?
Thanks!
-
I personally prefer hreflang set up in HTML code, especially because is much easier to verify and correct than when it is implemented in a sitemap file.
-
That's correct.
Long story - there is hreflang in HTML head and in xml sitemap. What's the difference? In HTML you can use same-site or cross-site links (between domains), in XML they are only in same domain. So in XML sitemap you can't use cross-site links (between different domains).
Also in SearchConsole you can set "international targeting" (SearchConsole -> Search Traffic -> International Targeting -> Country) for different sites.
I know that hreflang is little bit complicated but once you setup your first site correct then on next sites will be much faster.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply!
What you're saying is that we cannot reference different domains in the hreflang xml sitemap, is that correct? How do I then, make sure that the english version of the International Site doesn't show up for English Speakers in the US? Are you saying that for the US site, I only need basically one hreflang tag and no references to any other URLs?
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>
Here's the actual XML sitemaps that don't seem to be working according to the tested sitemap in Search Console. You can see the plain text there unless you view source code (as mentioned in Question 4).
- For the USA Site: http://www.shopcompex.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
- For the International Sites: https://www.compexstore.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
Do I need to just remove the USA domain from the International sitemap and all international domains from the USA sitemap?
I am getting an error in Search Console for both:
| This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location. |
Both referencing the different domains.
-
1. Look perfect. But i'm not sure that you can index in site X pages about site Y even in hreflang. You need to make test on some site. Please note - there is cross site canonical tag and this is ok. There is cross site alternate hreflang and this is ok. But i don't know about sitemap with links to other sites even in hreflang. You need to verify this in SearchConsole - upload sitemap and see for some warnings or errors there. Also don't forget that setup hreflang in HTML code too -> https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16 https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
2. Answer of this dependent from "validation" of previous question - can you setup sitemap of site X with links to site Y. IMHO you can't. So you must put sitemap about int.com to int.com site and usa.com on same site. Like your example and this is for usa.com site:
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>3. Yes, should be.
"Hreflang tags may not help you increase traffic; instead, the goal of using them is to serve the right content to the right users. They help search engines swap the correct version of the page into the SERP based on a user's location and language preferences. For information on how geotargeting can help with rankings, learn about ccTLDs."
https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag4. Can you show me this? Because your sitemap may miss XSL for showing proper. Or you may return different HTTP content type.
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 are some regions/countries not indexing correctly?
Hi All, Recently I've added different regions (website.com/se/ etc) to Google search console and pointed them to their relevant countries, but only half are working when I search from a regions IP with a VPN and use the correct Google search ( Google.se etc ). Will this correct over time? or is something else causing them not to be indexed up correctly? Thanks in advance <colgroup><col width="81"><col width="104"></colgroup>
International SEO | | WattbikeSEO
| Country | Appear in SERP 17/12/2018 |
| AU | TRUE |
| CZ | TRUE |
| DK | TRUE |
| HK | TRUE |
| IE | TRUE |
| IT | TRUE |
| KR | TRUE |
| NL | TRUE |
| NZ | TRUE |
| SE | TRUE |
| SG | TRUE |
| US | TRUE |
| ZA | TRUE |
| AE | FALSE |
| AT | FALSE |
| CH | FALSE |
| CN | N/A |
| DE | FALSE |
| EE | FALSE |
| ES | FALSE |
| FI | FALSE |
| FR | FALSE |
| GB | FALSE |
| GR | FALSE |
| JP | FALSE |
| NO | FALSE |
| PL | FALSE |
| RU | FALSE |
| SI | FALSE |
| TR | FALSE |0 -
Hreflang tags
I know these are intended for specifying different language/regional versions of one site, but can they be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au")? Or does it only work to specify an ALTERNATIVE to another language/region variation?
International SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Providing a default hreflang for translations
I've been doing a lot of research on hreflang and had a question regarding the implementation with location targeting. I have a translation for Brazilian Portuguese, I'd like to target Brazil with this translation on my site but also provide it as the default for other users that speak Portuguese outside of Brazil. Can I use the same translation for two different sites? So my hreflang would look like this: So in this example the pt-br and pt sites would be duplicates but with one being specifically targeted to Brazil and the other for all other people speaking Portuguese anywhere else in the world. The default language of the site is English so the full implementation would look like this:
International SEO | | Brando160 -
Hreflang vs canonical
I'm having an international Drupal website and the hreflang module is in use. However, I'm still not sure how to optimize the pages. Perhaps it's easier to ask with an example **International: **www.example.com/products/product1
International SEO | | Teklan
Here we have the master content of the product **US: **www.example.com/us/products/product1
Here we have exactly the same content as international. Nothing is localized. **UK: **www.example.com/uk/products/product1
Here we have almost the same content as on International. Here and there some local terms and extra text. **German: **www.example.com/de/products/product1
Here we have a translated version of the international page. Questions Do I add hreflang from all to all pages + to itself? Where do I add canonicals? How should I optimize the content on the US and UK pages?0 -
Is It valuable to use hreflang tags for blog posts?
I realize it's important to use hreflang tags when your site is translated into multiple languages and that content is very similar if not identical to the original language. However, is there value in having hreflang tags implemented for every blog post that gets translated? Does the same value hold true? In my case, the blog posts which get translated into different languages can somewhat vary from the original. By no means are they a direct translation. They are often adapted to meet the needs of that language and audience.
International SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Hreflang no return tags error in GWT
Hello everybody, It has been 2 month since I'm trying to figure out the cause of increasing "no return tags" error count in GWT. I have checked the syntax several times and even switched from meta tags method to including language versions in sitemap without any luck. Below is a screen shot of GWT error and a sitemap excerpt that shows original and alternate URL both having return tags pointing to each other. The full sitemap can be found here: http://wordsru.com/sitemap.xml Any help or insight about whats going on here much appreciated. Thanks! RKP6AhZ.jpg KFluNCC.jpg
International SEO | | Icemax0 -
Multilingual website - Url problem (sitemap)
At this moment our website both uses the language in the url like "en" and localizes the url itself ("books" in english and "boeken" in dutch). Because of the history of making our website multilingual we have a system that takes the browser language for the localization if the url doesn't contain a language like "en". This means: www.test.com/books = browser language www.test.com/en/books = english language www.test.com/boeken = browser language www.test.com/nl/boeken = dutch language Now for the sitemap this makes it a little troublesome for me because which hreflang is used for which url? 1) The first thing I thought of was using x-default for all urls that get the language of the browser. <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But as you can see we now got 2 times x-default. 2) Another solution I thought of was just use the localization of the url to determine the language like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But now we got 2 of each language for the same page. 3) The last solution I thought of was removing links without a language in the url (except for the homepage, which will still have an x-default) like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.comen/books</loc></url></code> But for this solution I need to put 301's at pages that are "deleted" and also need to change the system to 301 to the right page. Although the last point isn't really a problem I'm kind of worried that I will lose some of the "seo points" with a 301. (When we changed our domain in the past we had a bad experience with the 301 of our old domain) What do you think would be the best solution for SEO? Or do you have any other suggestions or solutions I haven't thought of.
International SEO | | Anycoin0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131