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 : 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
-
I think you are taking that rather too literally.
For example, as I said the .com could be the one targeted with an hreflang="x-default. A person in the UK would, by definition be served with the .com/uk version.
You wouldn't put a hreflang="x-default on the /uk homepage.
Regards
Nigel
-
The x-default is just what the link you provided says it is:
From Google: The reserved value hreflang="x-default" is used when no other language/region matches the user's browser setting. This value is optional, but recommended, as a way for you to control the page when no languages match. A good use is to target your site's homepage where there is a clickable map that enables the user to select their country.
If you use it for just one language, the issue comes when you have more than one language. The setup for x-default is for when there is no language detected, not that a general, non-regional language is detected.
-
Surely the x-default is, as the tag suggests, a default where no country or language is targeted? So if someone resided in an untargeted country and the site happened to rank it would be that one that came up.
Someone in the UK (which contained a UK target tag) would not go to default first, as you suggest, and then select their own country & language. That's misleading.
I agree that the subfolders would be used to target each country but you would still need both country and language. With Canada you may wish to target en and fr as both are relevant and each would reside in a different sub-folder.
The language is essential imho.
Regards Nigel
-
Actually, the x-default is meant to be for a page that allows users to select a country/language combination.
Alexis, in theory, what you are proposing should work. However, it is not always perfect. There is so much that goes into how Google serves content to each user. You might not see it working perfectly every time, but you can use the non-country with two country-specific hreflang tags together.
In fact, the country coded hreflang tags were meant to be dialect-specific. So a site could have US English content and UK English content, but also more general English content for the rest of the English speaking people.
In fact, it sounds like if the only thing changing is the currency, you might try geo-targeting subfolders. You can do hreflang in addition to that, but geotargeting is what is meant to be used here.
- Content for CA: https://www.domain.com/ca/content
- Content for GB: https://www.domain.com/gb/content
- General Content: https://www.domain.com/content
Claim the subfolders in Google Search Console as different properties and then target each one to those countries in the International Targeting area.
Then add hreflang the way you mentioned with those URLs. However, this setup won't work if you are doing things with another language mixed in. If you are planning on that, let me know.
-
Hi Alexis
If the third one is the default then you need a default hreflang tag.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
So the last one would have this tag pointing to it:
More on Google here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
It will then become the default site for all people not in England or Canada. Google will not see any of them as duplicate content.
Regards
Nigel
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
-
Do I need to add the actual language for meta tags and description for different languages? cited for duplicate content for different language
Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and this community so pardon my questions. We recently launched on our drupal site mandarin language version for the entire site. And when i do the crawl site, i get duplicate content for the pages that are in mandarin. Is this a problem or can i ignore this? Should i make different page titles for the different languages? Also, for the metatag and descriptions, would it better in the native language for google to search for? thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lynetteboss0 -
Paragraphs/Tables for Content & SEO
Hi Does anyone know if Google prefers paragraphs over content in a table, or doesn't it make much difference?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Sitemap: unique sitemap or different sitemaps by Country
Hi guys, i have a question about sitemaps. We are doing an international site, e.x. www.offers.com for landing page and www.offers.com/br for brazil, www.offers.com/it for italy, etc... i don't if we should do an unique sitemap for all countries or separate sitemaps by country, e.x.: unique sitemap: www.offers.com/sitemap.xml - including all sitemaps www.offers.com/br/sitemap.xml - sitemap for brazil market only. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Index process multi language website for different countries
We are in charge of a website with 7 languages for 16 countries. There are only slight content differences by countries (google.de | google.co.uk). The website is set-up with the correct language & country annotation e.g. de/DE/ | de/CH/ | en/GB/ | en/IE. All unwanted annotations are blocked by robots.txt. The «hreflang alternate» are also set. The objective is, to make the website visible in local search engines. Therefore we have submitted a overview sitemap connected with a sitemap per country. The sitemap has been submitted now for quite a while, but Google has indexed only 10 % of the content. We are looking for suggestion to boost the index process.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imsi0 -
Canonical tag + HREFLANG vs NOINDEX: Redundant?
Hi, We launched our new site back in Sept 2013 and to control indexation and traffic, etc we only allowed the search engines to index single dimension pages such as just category, brand or collection but never both like category + brand, brand + collection or collection + catergory We are now opening indexing to double faceted page like category + brand and the new tag structure would be: For any other facet we're including a "noindex, follow" meta tag. 1. My question is if we're including a "noindex, follow" tag to select pages do we need to include a canonical or hreflang tag afterall? Should we include it either way for when we want to remove the "noindex"? 2. Is the x-default redundant? Thanks for any input. Cheers WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Delete or not delete old/unanswered forum threads?
Hello everyone, here is another question for you: I have several forum postings on my websites that are pretty old and so they are sort of "dead discussion" threads. Some of those old discussion threads are still getting good views (but not new postings), and so I presume may be valuable for some users. But most of them are just answers to personal questions that I doubt someone else could be interested in. Besides that, many postings are just single, unanswered questions still waiting for an answer, forgotten, they are just sitting there, and will probably stay unanswered for years.... I don't think this may be good for SEO, am I right? How do you suggest to approach this kind of issues on forums or discussions sections on a website? I am eager to know your thoughts on all this. Thank you in advance! All the best, Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0
