What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
-
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site.
Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page?
Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish).
Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc...
Sitemap example for English website URL:
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url>Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url>Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!
-
Sorry for viewing this just now... but - forgive me if I am wrong due to a bad understanding of the question - but I think Tom answer is not correct.
You are telling that your main site is in English, but that has also a Spanish subdomain with just half of it localized in Spanish.
If this is the correct interpretation of the origin of your doubts, than, in the Spanish subdomain the hreflang should be implemented so:
IN CASE OF SPANISH SUBDOMAIN URL WITH SPANISH CONTENT
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
IN CASE OF SPANISH SUBDOMAIN URL WITH ENGLISH CONTENT
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
Why? Because those "en" and "es" mean "English Language" and "Spanish Language", so you cannot declare as Spanish something that Spanish is not. As well you cannot declare both URLs as to shown to English speaking users, because that would create an hiccup to Google, who would not know what of the two it has to finally show to English speaking users.
More over, if you don't want to extend the use of the hreflang suggesting also the countries where to show some given URL, then you should canonicalize the spanish.domain.com URL with English content to the original www.domain.com URL.
The idea of using also the country code ISO could solve - somehow - this issue, because writing something like this:
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
Then you will be telling Google to show the spanish.domain.com URL to the people using english in Spain (Google.es), and the English one to all the people speaking English in the rest of world.
Be aware, though, that Spanish people using Spanish will see in the www.domain.com URL in their Google.es SERPs, because the x-default is telling Google that all the people not using the language indicated in the hreflang="x-X" annotation (which is English), will have to see the main domain URL, and not the spanish subdomain one.
Hreflang is quite a sudoku, but it is extremely logic.
-
Thanks Tom for your input and feedback.
-
Hi,
To answer your first question, using hreflang tags in your sitemaps is a perfectly fine implementation of the tags, they will work whether they’re coded into the of each page, set in the sitemap or set in HTTP headers. This page will be useful for you as it explains all three methods quite well: http://www.branded3.com/blogs/implementing-hreflang-tag/
But when you add them to your sitemap you should include all variations of the page, along with a default – so if a French or German searcher accesses your site, you can define whether they’ll be served the Spanish or English page, like this:
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
To answer your second question about countries, you are fine to use hreflang=”es” to define all Spanish traffic, but using country codes can be useful in some circumstances. For instance if you have a site talking about football, you could use hreflang=”en-us” for a page which refers to the game as ‘soccer’ and use hreflang=”en-gb” for the page calling it ‘football’.
This Google Webmaster support post explains using both quite well under ‘Supported language values’ which I recommend you take a look at as well: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that helps,
Tom
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
-
I am based in the UK. I want to appeal to a UK and US market. One of my keywords is 'generalised' which gets way more traffic in my keyword phrase when spelt with a z and not an s. What do I do?
Hi folks. I am based in the UK. I am about to launch a new blog, and I want to appeal to the UK and US markets. One of my primary keywords is 'generalised', which gets way more traffic (as seen using Moz's keyword tool) in my keyword phrase when spelt with a z and not an s. What do I do? Any guidance would be great. I note this has been discussed before, but seemingly without a conclusion. I would really appreciate any help you can provide.
International SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Targeting/Optimising for US English in addition to British English (hreflang tags)
Hi, I wonder if anyone can help? We have an e-commerce website based in the UK. We sell to customers worldwide. After the UK, the US is our second biggest market. We are English language only (written in British English), we do not have any geo-targeted language versions of our website. However, we are successful in selling to customers around the world on a regular basis. We have developers working on a new site due to launch in Winter 2021. This will include a properly managed site migration from our .net to a .com domain and associated redirects etc. Management are keen to increase sales / conversions to the US before the new site launches. They have requested that we create a US optimised version of the site. Maintaining broadly the same content, but dynamically replacing keywords: Example (clothing is not really what we sell): Replacing references to “trainers” with “sneakers”
International SEO | | IronBeetle
Replacing references ‘jumpers with “sweaters”
Replacing UK phone number with a US phone number It seems the wrong time to implement a major overhaul of URL structure, considering the planned migration from .net to .com in the not too distant future. For example I’m not keen to move British English content on to https://www.example.com/en-gb Would this be a viable solution: 1. hreflang non-us visitors directed to the existing URL structure (including en-gb customers): https://www.example.com/
2. hreflang US Language version of the site: https://www.example.com/en-us/ As the UK is our biggest market It is really important that we don’t negatively affect sales. We have extremely good visibility in SERPS for a wide range of high value/well converting keywords. In terms of hreflang tags would something like this work? Do we need need to make reference to en-gb being on https://www.example.com/ ? This seems a bit of a ‘half-way-house’. I recognise that there are also issues around the URL structure, which is optimised for British English/international English keywords rather than US English e.g. https://www.example.com/clothing/trainers Vs. https://example.com/clothing/sneakers Any advice / insight / guidance would be welcome. Thanks.0 -
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
License Details across multiple regional brand sites
Hi guys! I have a quick question. Our team are currently having a debate regarding whether we should display our licensing details as text across all our brands in multiple regions (roughly 50 sites). My argument is that if you are required to have a license to be able to operate legally that Google would EXPECT to be able to crawl those details in order to provide their (Google) users with reliable results as opposed to rogue operators. The other side of the argument is that it will tie all the sites together and that would be a huge risk (as Google will perceive it as a network)- also that it would be seen as duplicate content? Would really appreciate any feedback on what is the best to do in this case. Thanks!!
International SEO | | RedSearch010 -
How to SEO for Spanish-Speaking People in California
I found myself in need of translating our current website into Spanish language so that we can target the Spanish-speaking population of L.A. and surrounding areas. I have several questions: 1. What should my url structure be? ex: domain.com/es/subpage
International SEO | | cgman
would that work? 2. Do I need to worry about any header information? Do I just translate the whole thing into Spanish with meta info etc..? What about rel="canonical", what do I need to do with the spanish translated pages? Any other tips for SEO in Spanish? I plan on hiring a translator to translate the entire website into Spanish and thought about putting it in its own sub-directory, for example: domain.com/es/ Thanks for looking!0 -
Geographical targeting and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
Let me paint you a picture, a site attempts geographical targeting by using sub-directories. However, 'targeting' is used loosely in this case. One sub-directory targets the US, the other is for everywhere else. For example: example.com/us/ <-- US example.com/en/ <--- Everywhere else The homepage is a map, they get taken to the US site if they click on US, they get the other site if they click anywhere else. The site is effectively duplicated in both folders, the only difference being one is written in US English, the other in UK English. So, while I am able to set the preferred geo in Google Webmaster tools for the US site, I can't for the everything else site. Recently I came across rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” and thought it may be useful. Does anyone know if I can specify more than one language per URL using this method? For example using multiple instances such as: Is this possible at all? Thanks in advance, and I'm open to any other suggestions! 🙂
International SEO | | David_ODonnell0 -
How to optimise you site in other countries eg Australia
We would like to rank better for specific keywords in Australia. We rank pretty well in our home tld .co.uk but would like to do so in .com.au I would appreciate your thoughts and recommendations.
International SEO | | seanmccauley0