Which pages to put hreflang on?
-
Hi,
we are running a site which is a directory consisting of numbers of phone spammers. It contains descriptions, comments and so on. We are currently present in 9 countries. The websites all have the same structure, but, of course, the spam numbers in each country are different ones. If I want to tell Google that our website is available is several locations/languages, do I only put my hreflang tag on the start page then?
Thanks
Thomas -
Yup, that makes sense to me.
It's a bit of a grey area and an unusual case, but I think that this approach makes more sense - otherwise you're actively trying to stop people who aren't in the 'correct' country for a phone number to find/access that page.
-
Hey Jono,
Thanks for coming back to me about this. I guess, we understood the concept of hreflang wrong. As I understand it now, a page in English on our US website cleverdialer.com would have to have a corresponding page with the same content but in German on our German site cleverdialer.de. This is not the case, as the spam numbers usually are active in one country.
If this is so, the hreflang on our phone number pages would not make sense as we have websites with the same general structure for different countries but the content differs.
-
Hey Thomas,
Did you have a chance to think about this?
-
Hmm. This is potentially a little complex.
It sounds like what you're describing _isn't _a case for hreflang / internationalisation.
If I understand correctly, you have one website, which has information about (things in) different regions, but your website isn't explicitly targeting users in different regions?
Where does language come into this?
What happens if I'm a user in Spain, who's Google'd a phone number from Germany? What does the current experience look like (what pages might they see, in what language), and what's the optimal experience look like?
-
Hi Igor,
Thanks for your reply.
I still would have one more question: The only pages which are really identical are the start pages, so there is no problem in placing a hreflang tag there. All the detail pages with phone numbers I have are different for every country. Would it make sense putting a hreflang on every detail page pointing to the start page or would it be better just not to put a hreflang on these pages?
-
All "international" pages. Specify language and country for each page you want to be shown in different countries.
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
-
When should hreflang be deployed in this situation; now or later ?
Hi I have a question in regard to point 1 in Gianluca Fiorelli first comment on Aleyda Solis old but great international targeting article in regard to hreflang: https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool it would obvs be amazing if either Gianlucca or Aleyda can answer but if anyone else feels they can do so confidently then that would be great too 🙂 I'm advising someone in similar situation as that (their main brand is USA based on a .com showing up in UK searches too) and they have launched .co.uk sites (without any seo) to target UK brand searches, so obviously the .com is still dominating UK serps for brand, and the .co.uk is ranking on page 4 on average for a brand search. **BUT **before I tell them to roll out hreflang shouldn't they build up some authority etc first for their new country specific (.co.uk) site ? since they are very new and have no authority or even basic SEO and don't rank higher than page 4 for brand searches (the .com is in no1 in both usa and uk). I know hreflang needs to be used correctly here but im not sure when it should be, now or later (after authority has built up for the new uk focused sites) ? In other words I take it deploying the hreflang correctly wont simply cause these home pages to swap positions for brand search in uk (or will it) ? Im worried deploying it immediately could actually destroy the brands current page 1 serps for brand term (since will remove the .com page from the uk serp). Hence i take it its best to build up the new .co.uk sites seo/authority etc first and at least get that sites brand ranking moving up the listings before deploying hreflang on the .com, to then hopefully remove the .com listing in place of the .co.uk for brand ? OR does Gianlucca point in his comment suggest that correct hreflang usage on both sites should swap the high authority .com no1 position with the low authority .co.uk for a brand search ? Many Thanks Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Hreflang missing
Hi everybody, I cannot find the hreflang in the source code neither in the sitemaps but Google search console is showing me the tag. Did anyone have this problem? Or does anyone know how to check it? I scanned the site and no tool detected the hreflang in it. Thank you.
International SEO | | poliedric0 -
Is it compulsory to use hreflang attribute for Multilingual site? What if I do not use such tag?
Hello Everybody, 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 Now if I donot use hreflang for Multilingual site then google will consider it as subdomain or duplicate site? But content of the sites are in different language. Thanks!
International SEO | | wright3350 -
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
International SEO | | Monologix
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!0 -
Redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO
Hi,
International SEO | | Awaraman
I have two questions. Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons and how important is it to include keywords to folders and page URLs. Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords? Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I undertstand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate the language versions. My question is regarding the subfolder. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should you also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder. Thanks in advance, Sam0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
Hello, We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website. Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language. These are the languages we target: French – FRANCE French – SWITZERLAND French – BELGIUM Italian – ITALY Italian – SWITZERLAND German – GERMANY German – SWITZERLAND German – AUSTRIA Spanish – SPAIN Spanish – COLOMBIA Spanish – PANAMA Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC Swedish – SWEDEN Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS English – UK English – INTERNATIONAL The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
The questions : Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language? Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all? Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs? Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market? Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place? Looking forward to your feedback. Best wishes, Maëlle0 -
Which hreflang tag to use for .eu domain
Hi there, We're trying to solve a problem with one of our domains, we have a .eu CCTLD and we're trying to implement hreflang tags. On our US and UK sites, we use "en-us" and "en-gb", but it's not clear how to approach this european problem, as there is not a "en-eu" tag. The site is in English, but serves several European countries speaking different languages. What's the best hreflang code to use in this situation? Any help much appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | dennis.globalsign0 -
International Landing Page Strategy
Hello, I'm looking for some insight in an area that I don't have much experience in - hoping the community can help! We are a healthcare staffing company serving clients in the U.S. (www.bartonassociates.com). We are interested in attracting clients in Australia and New Zealand. I'm wondering if anyone as experience with best practices for doing so (both from an SEO and PPC perspective). Would it be best to purchase .au and .nz domains for these landing pages and link back to our US site for more information (or even recreate a modified version of our US site for .au and .nz). My concern here is duplicate content issues, among other things. Or, would it be better to create Australia and New Zealand focused landing pages on our US site and drive PPC there? My concern here is that we would never get organic traffic from Australia and New Zealand to our US site, in light of the competition. Also, the messaging would be a bit mixed if targeting all three countries. Our core term is "locums" and "locum tenens". Greatly appreciate any insight from you guys. Thanks, Jason
International SEO | | ba_seomoz0