What’s the best way to handle multiple website languages in terms of metatags that should be used and pages sent on our sitemap?
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Hey everyone,
Has anyone here worked with SEO + website translations?
- When should we use canonical or alternate tag if we want the user to find our page on the language he used on Google?
- Should we send all pages on all the different locales on the sitemap?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks!
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Allan, the Google resource is the base.
However, remember always that:
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Google suggests using always the rel="canonical", even if it's only self-referential.
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The href in the hreflang must always indicate a canonical URL. If not, Google will consider it a mistake and won't consider the hreflang.
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If you're targeting two different languages (i.e.: English and Spanish), the use of the hreflang is not strictly necessary, however using it is another signal you give to Google about how you want your urls target a specific audience based on language or language/country.
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Thanks, Thomas!
I'll definitely have a look here and let you know if we got any other questions.
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This is my go to resource. Really helps plot it all out visually.
https://hreflang.org/use-hreflang-canonical-together/
As for sitemaps, refer to this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
If after those articles you aren't 100% sure, i'll try and answer any specific questions point by point.
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