Hreflang for multple countries but single language
-
I'm working on a site that has implemented hreflang.
The site is all in English but has slight differences and breaks down to separate domains, so
the hreflang implementation targets specific countries per domain.
This was tested using http://flang.dejanseo.com.au but Webmaster Tools has thrown up errors. For example,
**URLs for your site and alternative URLs in 'en_GB' that do not have return tags. **But every page refers back.Any ideas what's going wrong?
-
The only valid redirection is the one based on user browser, not IP, IMHO.
However, if you want to use that kind of redirection for the home page (not the others pages), then that redirection should be working the first time, so that users can eventually choose to go to another version of the site they prefer (i.e.: I live in Spain and I go to domain.eu. When I travel in the US, I still want to go to domain.eu, not always being pushed to use domain.com).
Moreover, doing that, you will let crawlers to discover also the others version even though they were redirected to the one corresponding to their IP the first time. In other words, Googlebot (Mountain View, USA, IP), the first time will go always to domain.com, but once there it will able to discover also domain.eu and domain.co.uk from the versions selector, and it won't be redirected again to domain.com.
Said all this, the fact is that you want to target a political area (EU) with domain.eu, the world with domain.com and the UK with domain.co.uk.
This desire to target three different kind of geographies complicates everything :-).
The only solution I see is:
-
Domain.com set up as "global" >> hreflang="en". All users using English will see it in the SERPs despite of their location but in these cases (see point 2 and 3);
-
Domain.eu set up as the site for the European countries >> hreflang="en-ES" - hreflang="en-IT" - hreflang="en-DE" and so on.
-
Domain.co.uk set up as the site for Great Britain >> hreflang="en-GB".
Doing this and implementing the hreflang in the canonical URLs of the sites and referencing only canonical URLs of the others sites (apart having the self-referral hreflang), then you should be safe.
However, remember that with those hreflang, people searching in another language than English will never (or almost never) see your sites but for brand name searches or very specific brand + product queries.
Therefore, I am still of the idea that having only English websites for targeting the world means missing a huge business opportunity.
-
-
Hi Michael,
The tool crawls with the user agent "Hreflang.org Testing Tool - Desktop version". It does not impersonate Googlebot. It does not follow 301 redirects because if you use Hreflang to point to another page, you should link to the canonical version of that page. A 301 redirect indicates an error.
My opinion is that forced, IP-based redirection is not a good idea because all URLs must be accessible from all locations. Google recently (about a year ago?) started crawling from other countries but you still want all URLs to be accessible from everywhere. The point of Hreflang is to indicate links across URLs; so hreflang makes IP-based redirection unnecessary.
If you really want to do IP-based redirection, do it on the x-default version of the page. And use the x-default version solely for redirection. For example, don't have your English version as the x-default and then redirect non-English users to other versions. If you do that, Germany-based crawlers won't ever be able to access your English URL.
-
Hi Nikhilesh,
as a matter of interest is your tool crawling as a google bot, rather than some IP? We have now set to deliver TLD depending on IP but the tool reports the following for the hreflangs not on the same domain
- Could not load this page. Server responded with HTTP Status code 301. Expected HTTP response code is 200 OK.
-
thanks. I'm taking a look.
-
I believe what's happening with your site is the same thing as what happened here on Google webmaster forums. JohnMu replied in that thread to say that because you have the same content on different sites (it might say en-US or en-GB but there is no detectable language customization for country). Google considers this duplicate content and starts ignoring some of your pages. And when some pages get ignored, the hreflang return tags from those pages go missing.
I blogged about this phenomenon in detail here.
Of course, it's also possible that your Hreflang markup has errors that the dejan seo tool did not detect. You can try the tool at hreflang.org to get a second opinion.
-
This is a bit difficult. All 3 domains are bringing in some good diverse country traffic as is, but Google has said it will now ignore hreflang until resolved.
So for example, .com brings in traffic and sales from Chile, Mexico and Bahamas. So if we removed the 'global' for .com are we not risking dropping the traffic for these locations. Or will Google ignore anyway and serve? There are too many countries getting traffic to implement each one as hreflang and remove the global en, it would be massive.
But having said that if the server was setting the TLD to be served depending on location it would then be adequate to just use the 'global' hreflang's to hreflang="en"? Is that right?
-
You should consider using either one subfolder hreflang or strongly considering wire going into these markets for instance Germany would be best for .de if you are just targeting a European country that speaks English for only English-speaking countries throughout the world you may be best off with A geotld
i agree with Gianluca.
-
If your .eu domain targets English in all European countries but UK (and you are targeting the USA with the .com), then you should not use the hreflang:
because that annotation says to Google to show the .eu domain to all the people using English independently from where they are, but in the UK ("show domain.co.uk") and USA ("show domain.com"). In other words, you .eu site would be visible to Canadian, Australians or even people in Greenland using English.
If that is also the meaning of the .eu domain, than that's fine, but if it is meant just for European countries, then better not having it.
Moreover, if the .eu is meant as "global", then it is useless to add all the hreflang like "en-it", "en-es" and so on, because the hreflang="en" would be enough.
However, I hope you are considering the .eu in English for targeting countries like Italy, Spain, France, Germany et al as temporary, because - let me tell you - you are not going to see lot of traffic from European not English speaking countries. Why? Because we don't search in English, neither we have our browser set up to use English as main language
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
-
Best Practices For Angular Single Page Applications & Progressive Web Apps
Hi Moz Community, Is there a proper way to do SPA (client side rendered) and PWA without having a negative impact on SEO? Our dev team is currently trying to covert most of our pages to Angular single page application client side rendered. I told them we should use a prerendering service for users that have JS disabled or use server side rendering instead since this would ensure that most web crawlers would be able to render and index all the content on our pages even with all the heavy JS use. Is there an even better way to do this or some best practices? In terms of the PWA that they want to add along with changing the pages to SPA, I told them this is pretty much separate from SPA's because they are not dependent. Adding a manifest and service worker to our site would just be an enhancement. Also, if we do complete PWA with JS for populating content/data within the shell, meaning not just the header and footer, making the body a template with dynamic JS as well would that effect our SEO in any way, any best practices here as well? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Spanish United States Vs Puerto Rico Hreflang
Hey Moz, So we are trying to figure out weather it is the same if we have Hreflang for "US-ES" vs "US-PR", IF we do "US-PR" for Puerto Rico for its own links we then have to create 3 parts to our site, PR Spanish PR English US Spanish We looked at Apple as an example and they had a "Latin America" for their Hreflang and labeled everything has either "es-419" is that the same concept as having just "us-es" for Puerto Rico? ( see attached screenshot ) We are trying to figure out what would be more effective and weather or not "US-ES" search results will appear for Puerto Rico also. PZVwg16
Technical SEO | | uBreakiFix0 -
Localizing URLs Path - Hreflang
Hello, This is a simple question regarding how URLs should be managed for proper results with the hreflang tags. Right now, we have a website in English and German. The hreflang tag is working properly. This is how we currently have it: https://www.memoq.com/ https://de.memoq.com/ But we will soon change the way we localize our web, moving out of the sub-domain structure. There is this possibility of localizing the URLs path, but I was wondering if the hreflang tag would work in such case. The new structure would look something like: https://www.memoq.com/why-memoq https://www.memoq.com/de/warum-memoQ So my question is: If we localize the keyword in the path of the URL, will the tag still work? Or do they need to be in the same language than the English version. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Kilgray1 -
Doctype language declaration problem
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Silviu
I have a problem with an SEM Rush warning on a website audit, for www.enjoyprepaid.com. It tells me "5852 pages are lacking language declaration", but I don't understand what it means and how to actually fix this problem. Also I run a W3 validator and have a doctype and language problem but again don't understand what they mean and how to fix them https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.enjoyprepaid.com%2FAfghanistan-calling-cards-2.html0 -
Hreflang Tags - error: 'en' - no return tags
Hello, We have recently implemented Hreflang tags to improve the findability of our content in each specific language. However, Webmaster tool is giving us this error... Does anyone know what it means and how to solve it? Here I attach a screenshot: http://screencast.com/t/a4AsqLNtF6J Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Redirects on multi language site and language detection
Hello! I have a multi language site in German and English. The site ranked well for the brand name and for German keywords. But after switching to a contend delivery network and changing the language detection method from browser language to IP location the site had indexing and ranking problems. Also in SERP the English homepage is shown for German keywords. On the other hand the language detection method is more accurate now. Current setup: The languages are separated via a folder structure for the languages: www.site.com/**en **and www.site.com/de. If the users IP is in Germany he is redirected via 302 from .com to .com/de. The rest of the world is redirected via 302 to .com/en. So the root www.site.com/ doesn't exist but has the most of the backlinks. Each folder has one sitemap under /de/sitemap.xml and /en/sitemap.xml. Each site and the root (.com, .com/de, .com/en) was added to WMT (no geo targeting) and the sitemaps were added (on the root domain both sitemaps and on the language specific sites just one). The sitemaps have no hreflang tag. Each page has an hreflang tag in the header pointing to itself and the alternate language. hreflang="x-default" is not set anywhere. Also on each page is a link to change language. Goals: From an SEO point of view we primarily target German speaking people. But a lot of international people (US, South America, Europe) search for our brand name so we want to serve them the English site. Therefore we want to: Get all the link juice when someone links to www.site.com to the German site Show Germans the German site in SERP and all others the English one Still serve the language automatically based on the location Do you have any idea how to achieve this? I think our main problem is that we want to push the German site the most but still serve the English site for most people (and therefore the Google Bot). Also does submitting the same sitemap twice (on the domain site and folders) do any harm? Any help oder links to ressources are greatly appreciated. I read a ton of articles but they are mostly for the case that english is the default language. Thanks for you help Moz community! Alex
Technical SEO | | AlexBLN1 -
Language Selection Splash Page- Impact on SEO
Hi, Our site has a page for new visitors to select their language to view our website So if you type our brand adress (http://www.bdc.ca) you should be redirected to this "splash" page (http://www.bdc.ca/pages/splashpage.aspx). What is the SEO impact of doing this and is there a better way for users to choose their languages, SEO-wise (and UX wise) ? You'll also see that after the visitor select its language, he's redirected to the actual home page using a two 302 redirects ( one to bdc.ca/en/ and then another one to the actual home page). I am aware of this and I know this is really bad. Please share what you think would be the best way to manage this language selection in respect to SEO, but with respect to UX too. Thanks ! Jean-François Monfette
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
301 redirecting some pages directly, and the rest to a single page
I've read through the Redirect guide here already but can't get this down in my .htaccess I want to redirect some pages specifically (/contactinfo.html to the new /contact.php) And I want all other pages (not all have equivalent pages on the new site) to redirect to my new (index.php) homepage. How can I set it up so that some specific pages redirect directly, and all others go to one page? I already have the specific oldpage.html -> newpage.php redirects in place, just need to figure out the broad one for everything else.
Technical SEO | | RyanWhitney150