For My International Sites only Homepage in other Language rest Pages are in English. Hreflang required here?
-
Hello All,
For my ecommerce site at my homepage there is an Language option of 9 different countries.
My main site - abcd.co.uk and other sites are like this se.abcd.co.uk, fr.abcd.co.uk, es.abcd.co.uk etc From my main site if user clicks on fr.abcd.co.uk then France site will open but when he click on any link it will redirect to my UK site. On France site homepage if user hover the cursor then links are visible of UK site only.
My query is ;-
-
Do it required here to implement hreflang? As only homepage is in different language?
-
Do it anything wrong in google point of view?
Thanks!
-
-
Hi there.
Hreflang is only for pages with multiple languages. So, in your case, it would be homepage only. No need to add "fake" hreflangs to other pages.
-
I am also facing this same problem. I'm trying to figure out if I put hreflang for all the languages only on the homepage (as that is the only page on our site with various versions) or if I need to put in on all pages of my site, even if they don't have international versions. Our homepage has about 7 international versions and our inner pages only have an english version. Do I only put international hreflang on the homepage and just put english on the inner pages? Thanks!
-
Agree with both statements.
Also want to say that the way you have it set up is a bit weird. If i land on non-english version of your website, and then on click on any link it would take me to english version, I'd consider it a big UX flaw. Especially if user can not understand english.
-
-
Yes. Also, you can set hreflang in the english version, just stating that its the english version.
-
I am not an expert implementating, every time I need to implement, I do a recheck of a few sources. Here some:
The hreflang Tags Generator Tool - Aleyda Solis (Moz's associate)
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs - Search Console Help
Hreflang Attribute - MozHope it helps!
GR. -
-
Hi @Gaston,
Thanks for the response!
-
I can implement hreflang only on homepage right because rest other pages are in English only?
-
Can you please suggest hreflang tag for my above sites to be implement on main and other sites ?
Please!
-
-
Hi there,
-
yes you should implement hreflang. As you are using a geo told, is really needed the hreflang so Google can understand that the web isn't British.
-
I'd set subdirectories instead of subdomains. Remember that Google considers subdomains as a different site from the main domain.
Hope it helps
GR
-
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
-
Is it OK to change language by user IP?
Hello, I just read https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#1 about multilingual website. Google says "Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language". so Is it ok to redirect url by user IP instead of user language?
International SEO | | visaasancard0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
Multi-lingual Site (Tags & XML SiteMap Question)
We have two sites that target users in two different countries in different languages in the following manner: Site 1 es.site1.com - Spanish version Site 2 site2.com/francais/.............. Navigation and content are translated into the foreign language from English What is the best way to let Google know about these multi-lingual pages: A. Add the rel="alternate" and hreflang= in the source code for the hunders of pages we have. B. Or is there a tool we can use to crawl and create XML site maps for different language pages. What do we need to do in the XML site map so that Google know that sitemap1.xml for example relates to Spanish as an example many thanks
International SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Looking for content writers for multi-language SEO
Hi All, I'm currently doing a lot of work for a UK client who has multiple sites outside the UK (all part of the same business). We're currently discussing the option of us handling all of his SEO for his German, French, Spanish and Italian sites too, but we only have access to one person in the office who can speak French and Spanish. They're currently booked up on other jobs that we can't really move them off, so I'm looking for options of outsourcing some of the content writing. My question is, does anyone know of any high quality content writing services that have writers available to write for the countries languages above? We're going to focus initially on their on-site strategy and building up their high quality content. At the moment, they don't have much relevant content on their website, so we're going to initially look at this. Moving forward, we'll be looking at their off-site strategy and trying to find areas to submit high quality articles, look at guest blogging and PR opportunities. Any tips anyone has on this side (in terms of outsourcing to native speakers) would be quite useful too! Many thanks,
International SEO | | PinpointDesigns
Lewis0 -
Why don't our English versions show up first?
If I google "greatfire" I find the Chinese version of our website (zh.greatfire.org) before the English version (en.greatfire.org). This is not on the Chinese-language version of Google. Why is this? Our site even has a language indicator () and also hints of where the English version is (). The same thing happens if I google "freeweibo". I find https://freeweibo.com but not https://freeweibo.com/en/, even though we indicate that's the English version (). Any ideas?
International SEO | | GreatFire.org0 -
Can I point some rel alternate pages to a 404?
Hi everyone, I'm just setting up a series international websites and need to use rel="alternate" to make sure Google indexes the right thing and doesn't hit us with duplicate content. The problem is that rel="alternate" is page specific, and our international websites aren't exact copies of the main UK website. We've taken out the ecommerce module and a few blog categories because they aren't relevant. Can I just blanket implement rel="alternate" and let it sometimes point to a 404 on the alternate websites? Or is Google going to find that a bit weird? Thanks,
International SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
Country specific landing pages
I have a client who wants to put a re-direct on his landing pages based on the visitors IP address. The landing page will be a sub domain relevant to the country their IP is located in. I am a little concerned this will effect the SEO. Appreciate any advice. Dylan 🙂
International SEO | | gomyseo0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0