Hreflang in country specific XML Sitemaps?
-
Hello!
I'm rolling out hreflang tags in my client's "main" XML Sitemap.
My question is: do we need to implement these tags in the country level XML Sitemaps also?
Thanks!
-
Hey SimpleSearch–yes, you'll need to indicate these alternate URLs in your sitemap. Google claims that you can use hreflang or sitemaps to indicate international content, but I typically find that being thorough is best (you can always test whether your updated sitemap has made a difference through log file analysis before and after you execute this change).
Here is Google's writeup on indicating alternate pages via sitemap: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
-
If you have different content/pages oriented for different regions, yes you need to implement
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
-
301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap
Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing. You could all but call it spam. www.site.com/page-1 www.site.com/page-2 www.site.com/page-3 www.site.com/page-4 www.site.com/page-5 www.site.com/page-6 Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is: www.site.com/not-spammy-page You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page. Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice. Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap? Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!
Technical SEO | | Emory_Peterson0 -
I want to resubmit sitemap
I am doing major changes in my website some of my old url pages i don't want them to be indexed or submitted in site map some of other old pages i want to keep them and there is new pages any one can give me hints what should i do also I have thousands of pages on my website and I don't want to submit all my pages i want to submit best pages to google in sitemap that why i want to resubmit new site maps
Technical SEO | | Jamalon0 -
Hreflang and canonical for multi-language website
Hi all, We're about to have a new website in different languages and locations, which will replace the existing one. Lets say the domain name is example.com. the US version will be example.com/en-us/ and the UK version will be example.com/en-uk/. Some of the pages on both version share the same content. So in order to solve it, we're about to use hreflang on each page + a canonical tag which will always use the US address as canonical address. My question is - since we are using canonical tag along with hreflang, is there a possibility that a user who is searching with Google.co.uk will get the canonical US address instead of the UK address? Or maybe the search engine will know to display the right localized address since (UK) i've been using hreflang? It is really important for me to know, because i'm afraid we will lose the high rankings that we have right now on google.co.uk. Thanks in Advance
Technical SEO | | Operad-LTD0 -
Is a Rel="cacnonical" page bad for a google xml sitemap
Back in March 2011 this conversation happened. Rand: You don't want rel=canonicals. Duane: Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error. Is this the same with Google?
Technical SEO | | DoRM0 -
While SEOMoz currently can tell us the number of linking c-blocks, can SEOMoz tell us what the specific c-blocks are?
I know it is important to have a diverse set of c-blocks, but I don't know how it is possible to have a diverse set if I can't find out what the c-blocks are in the first place. Also, is there a standard for domain linking c-blocks? For instance, I'm not sure if a certain amount is considered "average" or "above-average."
Technical SEO | | Todd_Kendrick0 -
Google sitemap just for a part of site?
Hi, I am about reorganize (content and seo-wise) a part of a larger site and I wondered if it is possible to use a Google sitemap just for some but not all pages of a site? Does anyone know if this has any impact on pages that are not included in the sitemap? Thanks
Technical SEO | | haest0 -
Country domain: Seo for other languages
Hi, I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy. There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder. The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent). Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | depi0 -
URL specific websites with i-framed application
I have 300 URL specific websites that rank well in Yahoo and Bing. Unfortunately I don't have access to the websites due to a previous marketing agreement (before my time). I do have access to the application that is i-framed into the websites. I was thinking about adding a paragraph below the application with a link to the primary website. How does google look at these links. If I add the link, there will be an additional 300 links showing up at the same time. Not what they want to see from my personal knowledge base. At the same time, its not black hat SEO, I am just trying to link to the other websites which I own which are related. What are people thoughts.
Technical SEO | | FidelityOne0