Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain
I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites. This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations. We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different. Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is - Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages? If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website? I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TinoSharp0 -
HREFLANG setup for Europe (in English) + .eu domain
We have been struggling to find answers since we launched our European website. We have the following structure: WEBSITE HUB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz-maddesigngroup
https://ecosmartfire.com This works as a hub for our users. We show the url printed in our marketing materials. When someone lands in this URL, we check if we have a local store in the user's location and prompt the user to go to the right destination. The default hreflang is: LOCAL VERSIONS
https://ecosmartfire.com/us/en/ (United States)
https://ecosmartfire.com.au (Australia)
https://ecosmartfire.eu (Europe)
https://ecosmartfire.fr (France) We have no problems with United States, Australia and France. The hreflang tags look like this: EUROPE
https://ecosmartfire.eu We have two problems in Europe:
1. Language: the European store is available just in English
2. No hreflang: Europe doesn't have a hreflang that covers all the countries so we had to create lots of hrelangs pointing to the same location. The hreflang tags look like this: ... and the list goes on. Do you think this is the right approach? Or should I just remove these European hreflang tags from the website code? Thanks,0 -
Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?
I just shut off the All-In-One seo pack plugin for wordpress, and turned on the Yoast plugin. It's great! So much helpful, seo boosting info! So, in watching a video on how to configure the plugin, it mentions that I should update the sitemap, using the Yoast sitemap I'm afraid to do this, because I'm pretty technologically behind... I see I have a Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold) plugin turned on (and have had it for many years). Should I leave this one on? Or would you recommend going through the steps to use the Yoast plugin sitemap? If so, what are the benefits of the Yoast plugin, over the Google XML? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>
Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycity4kids0 -
Should sitemap include https pages?
Hi guys, Trying to figure out some onsite issues I've been having. Would appreciate any feedback on the following 2 questions: My homepage (http://mysite.com) is a 301 redirect to https://mysite.com, which is under SSL. Only 2 pages of my site are https, the rest are http. Should the directory of my sitemap be https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml or should it be kept with http (even though the redirected homepage is to https)? Should my sitemap include the https pages (only 2 pages) as well as the http? Thanks, G
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | G.Anderson0 -
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 -
Where to link to HTML Sitemap?
After searching this morning and finding unclear answers I decided to ask my SEOmoz friends a few questions. Should you have an HTML sitemap? If so, where should you link to the HTML sitemap from? Should you use a noindex, follow tag? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprodigy290