What’s the best way to handle multiple website languages in terms of metatags that should be used and pages sent on our sitemap?
-
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!
-
Allan, the Google resource is the base.
However, remember always that:
-
Google suggests using always the rel="canonical", even if it's only self-referential.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
Thanks, Thomas!
I'll definitely have a look here and let you know if we got any other questions.
-
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.
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
-
Putting "noindex" on a page that's in an iframe... what will that mean for the parent page?
If I've got a page that is being called in an iframe, on my homepage, and I don't want that called page to be indexed.... so I put a noindex tag on the called page (but not on the homepage) what might that mean for the homepage? Nothing? Will Google, Bing, Yahoo, or anyone else, potentially see that as a noindex tag on my homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
What's the best way to check Google search results for all pages NOT linking to a domain?
I need to do a bit of link reclamation for some brand terms. From the little bit of searching I've done, there appear to be several thousand pages that meet the criteria, but I can already tell it's going to be impossible or extremely inefficient to save them all manually. Ideally, I need an exported list of all the pages mentioning brand terms not linking to my domain, and then I'll import them into BuzzStream for a link campaign. Anybody have any ideas about how to do that? Thanks! Jon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonMorrow0 -
Best practices for handling https content?
Hi Mozzers - I'm having an issue with https content on my site that I need help with. Basically we have some pages that are meant to be secured, cart pages, auth pages, etc, and then we have the rest of the site that isn't secured. I need those pages to load correctly and independently of one another so that we are using both protocols correctly. Problem is - when a secure page is rendered the resources behind it (scripts, etc) won't load with the unsecured paths that are in our master page files currently. One solution would be to render the entire site in https only, however this really scares me from an SEO standpoint. I don't know if I want to put my eggs in that basket. Another solution is to structure the site so that secure pages are built differently from unsecured pages, but that requires a bit of re-structuring and new SOPs to be put in place. I guess my question is really about best practices when using https. How can I avoid duplication issues? When do I need to use rel=canonical? What is the best way to do things here to avoid heavy maintenance moving forward?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Sitemap not indexing pages
My website has about 5000 pages submitted in the sitemap but only 900 being indexed. When I checked Google Webmaster Tools about a week ago 4500 pages were being indexed. Any suggestions about what happened or how to fix it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Best way to migrate to a new URL structure
Hello everyone, We’re changing our URL structure from something like this: example.com/index.php?language=English To something like this: example.com**/english/**index.php The change is implemented with mod_rewrite so all the old URLs can still work We have hundreds of thousands of pages that are currently indexed with the old URL structure What’s the best way to get Google to rapidly update its index and to maintain as much ranking as possible? 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new equivalent format? If we detect that the URL is in an old format, render the page with a canonical tag pointing to the new equivalent format as well as adding a noindex, nofollow tag? Something else? Thanks for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?
when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores? I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrooklynCruiser3 -
All page files in root? Or to use directories?
We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /. For example: /aosta-valley-i6816.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories. For example, the above URLs would be the following: /images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes? Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy? Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory: /images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/ If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/ Just looking for some clarity to our problem! Thank you for your help guys!0 -
HTML5 and using multiple H1 tags
Hi All, Our dev team have just asked me a very interesting question........ Within the context of an HTML5 page, where it is supported and encouraged to use multiple H1 tags, will the use of multiple H1 tags be detrimental to SEO? or does Google fully understand how HTML5 works and therefore not penalise a website for using multiple H1 tags? I have an opinion on this that if it helps usability and user experience then it is likely that it will be good for SEO. It would be really good to hear views of people who have tried this or have decided against it! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0