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.
The correct hreflang for the GB
-
Hi does anyone know the correct hreflang for the UK
Google webmaster error:
International Targeting | Language > 'en-GB' - no return tags (sitemaps)Sitemap provided URLs and alternate URLs in 'en-GB' that do not have return tags.Thanks you all
-
Great, thanks for clearing this up.
Have a great day..
-
If your site is only in English you don't need to use hreflang tags at all.
-
Sorry
But what if my site is only in english and not multi language.. do i need to use the above.
Using Flang, I tested BBC.co.uk and Moz.com and both do not use hreflang...
Confused..
-
Well, you have two .com.com in there ... so that's in general wrong.
But yes, it's en-gb, not en-UK.
You just have to have all the tags on all the pages. You can use Flang to see what's wrong as well.
-
Hi MattAntonio,
Thanks for your reply, so are you saying that this code is correct?
Regards Tai
-
Generally when you get the no return tags error it means that you put a hreflang for one page but not the referring page.
Let's say your pages are:
If you put hreflang tags on /en but not the rest, you'll get the no return tags error.
So just put the full hreflang tag set on every page that uses any one of the languages and you'll solve this error. Also see Webmasters Support for more info.
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
-
Solved hreflang href: Should Japanese URL characters be encoded
Hi all, I have searched in vain for a concrete answer to this question. If you're dealing with the hreflang tags yourself (i.e. don't use automation plugins etc.), is it okay if the URLs (e.g. in Japanese) remain unencrypted? Example (not encoded):
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hermski
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://domain. com/エグザイルリンク/" /> The same encoded:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://domain. com/%e3%82%a8%e3%82%b0%e3%82%b6%e3%82%a4%e3%83%ab%e3%83%aa%e3%83%b3%e3%82%af" /> When checking the unencoded tags in hreflang checkers, they don't seem to have a problem with this (they don't flag any issues). Also on other websites I see both approaches with unencoded and encoded hreflang variants. What is your opinion on this, could there be conflicts and/or is there a best practice? Thanks all0 -
HREFLANG setup for Europe (in English) + .eu domain
We have been struggling to find answers since we launched our European website. We have the following structure: WEBSITE HUB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz-maddesigngroup
https://ecosmartfire.com This works as a hub for our users. We show the url printed in our marketing materials. When someone lands in this URL, we check if we have a local store in the user's location and prompt the user to go to the right destination. The default hreflang is: LOCAL VERSIONS
https://ecosmartfire.com/us/en/ (United States)
https://ecosmartfire.com.au (Australia)
https://ecosmartfire.eu (Europe)
https://ecosmartfire.fr (France) We have no problems with United States, Australia and France. The hreflang tags look like this: EUROPE
https://ecosmartfire.eu We have two problems in Europe:
1. Language: the European store is available just in English
2. No hreflang: Europe doesn't have a hreflang that covers all the countries so we had to create lots of hrelangs pointing to the same location. The hreflang tags look like this: ... and the list goes on. Do you think this is the right approach? Or should I just remove these European hreflang tags from the website code? Thanks,0 -
Hreflang : mixing with/without country code for same language
Hello, I would like to display 3 different english versions of my website : 1 for UK, 1 for CA and 1 for other english users. It would look like this for a page: . (english content with £ prices) <link rel="alternate" href="https: xxx.com="" en-ca" hreflang="en-CA">(english content with $CA prices)</link rel="alternate" href="https:> <link rel="alternate" href="https: xxx.com="" en="" " hreflang="en">(english content without currency)</link rel="alternate" href="https:> I wonder if I can mix this hreflang without country code with hreflangs with country code for the 2 other specific versions... or if the hreflang without country code version will appear whatever the country, even if i specified it . In other terms, is hreflang="en" > hreflang="en-CA" + hreflang="en-GB" if tagged together on a same page? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexisH0 -
Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?
A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm0 -
:Pointing hreflang to a different domain
Hi all, Let's say I have two websites: www.mywebsite.com and www.mywebsite.de - they share a lot of content but the main categories and URLs are almost always different. Am I right in saying I can't just set the hreflang tag on every page of www.mywebsite.com to read: rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de' /> That just won't do anything, right? Am I also right in saying that the only way to use hreflang properly across two domains is to have a customer hreflang tag on every page that has identical content translated into German? So for this page: www.mywebsite.com/page.html my hreflang tag for the german users would be: <link < span="">rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http://mywebsite.de/page.html' /></link <> Thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
Using hreflang="en" instead of hreflang="en-gb"
Hello, I have a question in regard to international SEO and the hreflang meta tag. We are currently a B2B business in the UK. Our major market is England with some exceptions of sales internationally. We are wanting to increase our ranking into other english speaking countries and regions such as Ireland and the Channel Islands. My research has found regional google search engines for Ireland (google.ie), Jersey (google.je) and Guernsey (google.gg). Now, all the regions have English as one their main language and here is my questions. Because I use hreflang=“en-gb” as my site language, am I regional excluding these countries and islands? If I used hreflang=“en” would it include these english speaking regions and possible increase the ranking on these the regional search engines? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SilverStar11 -
Hreflang and paginated page
Hi, I can not seem to find good documentation about the use of hreflang and paginated page when using rel=next , rel=prev
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
Does any know where to find decent documentatio?, I could only find documentation about pagination and hreflang when using canonicals on the paginated page. I have doubts on what is the best option: The way tripadvisor does it:
http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-oa390-Corsica-Hotels.html
Each paginated page is referring to it's hreflang paginated page, for example: So should the hreflang refer to the pagined specific page or should it refer to the "1st" page? in this case:
http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-Corsica-Hotels.html Looking foward to your suggestions.0 -
Hreflang in vs. sitemap?
Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time. I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb. I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter? GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb0