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)?
-
Hi there,
There are many ways to do it. In my opinion:
- If the amount of pages is low, you can do it in just one sitemap.
- If the amount is really huge, do it in different sitemaps, stating in the name of each of them the language (e.g. sitemap-es-mx.xml) and create a sitemap_index.hml with all those.
Remember that its best practice to have the sitemaps in the root folder: domain.com/sitemap
Best luck.
GR. -
Hi Gaston - Thanks for the response. My urls are set up like so:
- mysite.com/us/en/page
- mysite.com/fr/fr/page
- mysite.com/ca/fr/page
- mysite.com/mx/es/page
- mysite.com/es/es/page
And so on. Would you recommend doing a separate sitemap for each language/country? Thus:
- mysite.com/us/en/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/fr/fr/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/ca/fr/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/mx/es/sitemap.xml
- mysite.com/es/es/sitemap.xml
Thanks!
-
Hello there!
Yes you should, better you must do a sitemap, but do not include the hreflang attribute.
Here: Google Search Console help you can see how a sitemap INCLUDING the hreflang looks like. Remove the portion:<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/></xhtml:link>Hope it helps.
Good Luck!
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
-
x-default hreflang attribute value
Hi When is it best to use the x-default hreflang attribute value tags? Screaming frog is flagging lots as missing, but is it necessary? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
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 -
Use hreflang on links without rel alternative?
Does it do any good to use hreflang on links without rel="alternative" ? We have on each page a possibility to go to another language, but the languages root page and not an alternative version of that specific article.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Preen0 -
2015/2016 Sitemaps Exclusions
Hello fellow mozrs!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | artdivision
Been working on a few Property (Real Estate for our American friends) websites recently and and two questions that constantly come up as we spec the site are: 1. What schema (schema.org) should the website use (throughout all pages as well as individual pages). Did anyone found that schema actually helped with their ranking/CTR?
2. Whilst setting up the sitemaps (usually Yaost is our preferred plugin for the job), what page would you EXCLUDE from the site map? Looking forward to some interesting comments.
Dan.0 -
Can the Alternate/hreflang tags harm SEO?
Hello, Recently one of my regional websites, targeted for Denmark (xxxx.dk (TLD)), received a manual penalty from Google, specified as “pure spam”. The reason for this (as I suspect) can be the fact that the Danish site’s content, is fully translated from English, on the main site (.com). To fix that problem with Google, I want to use the “alternate/hreflang” tags on both sites
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda
URL’s (the main and the regional), before submitting it for a second review on WMT. Following this, I would like to ask you few questions: 1. Is there any RISK in using alternate tags between two sites (a “healthy” site to the one that got the penalty), Can it harm the SEO of the main site (.com)?
2. Once done, Will it resolve my problem with Google? Will they remove the manual penalty?
3. Based on your experience, would you recommend me to rewrite all the content on the Danish site, instead of just translating it (the current status)? Would love to hear your opinion on those issues. Thanks a lot!0 -
XML Sitemap for classifieds
I have seeon some trends for sites which do not even use XML sitemp and robots e.g. see this site. How do you see if sitemap is not used. Also for classified websites, should ad pages be included in sitemap because after certain duration those ads will be deleted and google might not be able to crawl. What do you suggest about XML sitemap for classified website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Submitting sitemaps every 7 days
Question, if you had a site with more than 10 million pages (that you wanted indexed) and you considered each page to be equal in value how would you submit sitemaps to Google? Would you submit them all at once: 200 sitemaps 50K each in a sitemap index? Or Would you submit them slowly? For example, would it be a good idea to submit 300,000 at a time (in 6 sitemaps 50k each). Leave those those 6 sitemaps available for Google to crawl for 7 days then delete them and add 6 more with 300,000 new links? Then repeat this process until Google has crawled all the links? If you implemented this process you would never at one time have more than 300,000 links available for Google to crawl in sitemaps. I read somewhere that eBay does something like this, it could be bogus info though. Thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zAutos0 -
How to generate xml sitemape for an ecommerce site with more than 50000 pages?
Hi, I am new to the forum and struggling hard to work on xml sitemap for an ecommerce site. Site is dynamic and more that 50,000 pages (including product pages). Challenges I am facing should I opt for category wise xml sitemap? how to include new product pages (dynamically) I was wondering if there is any tool that can generate xml site map online (I mean as soon as a new page is added to the site it will pick up automatically). thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | posy0