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Is that the case even if they’re relative URLs that have been set up as the canonical links? This is why I was going to remove them as the hreflangs are  all in the sitemap. Is it just the hreflangs that have to go in a single location and canonical tags could be left in head?

thanks!

Hi,

Quick easy question here I hope!

An international site has hreflang and canonical tags in page head sections and also hreflang in the sitemap so I can see one version needs removing. The head section versions are relative URLs and need updating so think we will keep the sitemap hreflangs instead.

If the sitemap implementation is going to be used (sitemap auto-updates when changes are made to pages so seems easier to do this way) am I right in thinking No canonical tags are needed at all (and can safely  be removed from head section too?).  Pretty sure links included in sitemap are assumed to be canonicals, or any issues with this approach?  Will be using x-default for the default language version of homepage too.

I’m currently working on SEO for an international website with subdirectories set up for each international version. The site is has never had any SEO previously and is having a lot of indexing and visibility issues. Also geotargeting seems very off in search results.

I’ve diagnosed various issues and want to check my assumptions and solutions below make sense...

The root domain uses a 302 redirect to display content from the /en-GB page. (302 redirects seem to be a default language fallback setting configured in the CMS) and they’re used for most key pages. I’m concerned these redirects are contributing to a lot of the issues with incorrect indexing. The en-GB is the default language version of the site. So far, the en-GB has been set as the canonical version too.

Both the root domain and this subdirectory URL display the same content. (en-US is also a near duplicate page). All other international homepages appear only on their subfolder URL.

Various SEO tools have been showing redirect loops (caused by language changing  parameter versions of URLs being crawled that don’t have redirects on them) and issues with hreflang and canonicals.  I believe the hreflang tags and canonicals have been ignored due to relative URLs being used for each, as search results don’t always contain the desired versions of the URLs (in terms of regional version and preferred canonical versions).

My questions are:

1. Could these 302 redirects be conflicting with hreflang tags? If so, I’m thinking they should be removed (if not made 301s). GSC doesn’t like the fact these are on key pages, as redirected pages are listed in the sitemap.
2. Will changing hreflang tags and canonical tags to absolute URLs possibly be enough to fix these issues from what you can tell? (Or will redirects need to go too?)
3. Is the en-GB correctly set as the canonical when the root domain is also accessible, indexed and using this page’s content within the CMS too? (I feel like the root domain should be the canonical version, but not sure that works together with other language version subfolders or with a redirect in place from root to subfolder).

As an extra point to the last question, GSC has recently chosen the root domain as the canonical (despite en-GB being set as user preference) and is now choosing to deindex some international versions of the homepage as a result. Hoping that getting the hreflang tags fixed and possibly redirects removed should correct this ASAP. But perhaps this also confirms en-GB should be the canonical and marked X-default too.

I hope that all makes sense and sorry it’s a small collection of related questions. Really appreciate any replies.

Thank you Victor! I hadn’t found that post you shared while searching elsewhere for an answer too!

My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US.

At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags.

My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful  to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting.

Many thanks in advance!