Is it good practice to use hreflang on pages that have canonicals?
-
I have a page in English that has both English & Spanish translations on it. It is pulled in from a page generated on another site and I am not able to adjust the CSS to display only one language.
Until I can fix this, I have made the English page the canonical for both. Do I still want to use hreflang for English & Spanish pages?
What if I do not have a Spanish page at all. I assume (from what I've read) I should not have an hreflang on the English page. Is this correct?
Thank you in advance.
-
For a proper hreflang implementation, the canonical of each page has to point to itself in addition to referencing the other pages that have the same content in a different language. Otherwise, the implementation would be wrong
-
Just to confirm: I need to remove hreflang on site pages that have a canonical to another page (and/or other website)? Thanks for taking time to answer.
-
For hreflang to be implemented properly, both English and Spanish pages have to reference each other AND each page's canonical has to point to itself.
Having one of the pages point its canonical somewhere else will break the implementation.
-
Only for the pages (English & Spanish) on my site.
-
So if I understand this properly, you have a page on your site and has its canonical pointing to a page on another site and you want to create hreflang for both pages? Or only for the page on your website?
-
I understand. I was asking about the situation where the canonical points to a page not on my website.
-
To answer your last question, yes - you don't need to implement hreflang if you only have an English page.
However, if you have an English and a Spanish page for the same content, then you'll need to implement hreflang on both and have the canonical of each page point to itself. This is an important element of the hreflang implementation and where we see a lot of implementation errors. Having the canonical for both pages point to the English version is wrong.
You can read more about hreflang in MOZ's documentation here.
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
-
General questions about implementing hreflang using XML sitemap
I created another thread regarding hreflang sitemaps. However, this one is more general and doesn't cover multiple sitemaps for different localizations so I think it's reasonable creating a new thread. We are trying to implement hreflang using XML sitemap. We have localized content for a few countries, but only 1/3 of the content is 'duplicate' localized content. How should this be presented in the sitemap? Can we have some urls with hreflang-tags and some without? Also, where should this be located? In the usual sitemap file at site.com/sitemap.xml or should we create a different sitemap site.com/hreflang.xml where we just paste all hreflang-info? And if it should be in /hreflang.xml - can we have the same URL twice (in both current sitemap and hreflang sitemap)?
Technical SEO | | Telsenome0 -
Very wierd pages. 2900 403 errors in page crawl for a site that only has 140 pages.
Hi there, I just made a crawl of the website of one of my clients with the crawl tool from moz. I have 2900 403 errors and there is only 140 pages on the website. I will give an exemple of what the crawl error gives me. | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | | | | | | | | | | There are 2900 pages like this. I have tried visiting the pages and they work, but they are only html pages without CSS. Can you guys help me to see what the problems is. We have experienced huge drops in traffic since Septembre.
Technical SEO | | H.M.N.0 -
Using 302s to redirect pages returning in 6 months
We are doing a 2-phase site redesign (in order to meet a deadline). An entire section of the site will not be available in the first phase, but will come back in 6 months. The question is, do we use 301s or 302s for those pages that will be coming back in 6 months? Is there a time limit on what is considered "temporary"? thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Max_B0 -
"One Page With Two Links To Same Page; We Counted The First Link" Is this true?
I read this to day http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718 I thought to myself, yep, thats what I been reading in Moz for years ( pitty Matt could not confirm that still the case for 2014) But reading though the comments Michael Martinez of http://www.seo-theory.com/ pointed out that Mat says "...the last time I checked, was 2009, and back then -- uh, we might, for example, only have selected one of the links from a given page."
Technical SEO | | PaddyDisplays
Which would imply that is does not not mean it always the first link. Michael goes on to say "Back in 2008 when Rand WRONGLY claimed that Google was only counting the first link (I shared results of a test where it passed anchor text from TWO links on the same page)" then goes on to say " In practice the search engine sometimes skipped over links and took anchor text from a second or third link down the page." For me this is significant. I know people that have had "SEO experts" recommend that they should have a blog attached to there e-commence site and post blog posts (with no real interest for readers) with anchor text links to you landing pages. I thought that posting blog post just for anchor text link was a waste of time if you are already linking to the landing page with in a main navigation as google would see that link first. But if Michael is correct then these type of blog posts anchor text link blog posts would have value But who is' right Rand or Michael?0 -
When we have 301 page is a Rel=Canonical needed or should we make 1 Noindex?
Hi, When we have a page as 301 (Permanent Redirect) is a Rel=Canonical needed or should we make 1 Noindex? Example http://www.Somename.com/blog/138760 when clicked goes to http://www.Somename.com/blogs/whenittyam Should i noindex the below pages http://www.Somename.com/blog/138760 and add Rel=Canonical Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Canonical: Is this a problem?
Hi!!
Technical SEO | | petrospan
I am running a small wordpress website and i have a question because i am a litle confusic about Rel Canonical notices in the crawl diagnostics! I have the seo by yoast and i have fix all the canonical url for my page, but i take notices. I must worried about it or is something that inform me that everyting is ok? rel.jpg rel.jpg0 -
What to do when you want the category page and landing page to be the same thing?
I'm working on structuring some of my content better and I have a dilemma. I'm using wordpress and I have a main category called "Therapy." Under therapy I want to have a few sub categories such as "physical therapy" "speech therapy" "occupational therapy" to separate the content. The url would end up being mysite/speech-therapy. However, those are also phrases I want to create a landing page for. So I'd like to have a page like mysite.com/speech-therapy that I could optimize and help people looking for those terms find some of the most helpful content on our site for those certain words. I know I can't have 2 urls that are the same, but I'm hoping someone can give me some feedback on the best way to about this. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
On page optimisation: Good for the users and engines?
I would like to rank for words as:
Technical SEO | | madsurfer
windsurfing equipment
windsurfing news
windsurfing sails
windsurfing boards etc. Now am I wondering if I should use exact those words in the navigation/titles/descriptions because it seems not user friendly. The whole website is about windsurfing thus naming it just “equipement” instead of “windsurfing equipment” would be clear to a visitor that I am talking about that windsurfing related topic. Here is an example: http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/competitions-events/
I can even change the URL to http://madwindsurfing.com/cat/windsurfing-competitions-events/ What would be the best way of choosing the naming/descriptions when I do on-page optimisation which is good for the engines and for the users and who would you do in my case?0
