Adding Meta Languange tag to xhtml site - coding help needed
-
I've had my site dinged by Google and feel it's likely several quality issues and I'm hunting down these issues.
One of Bing's Webmaster SEO tools said my xhtml pages (which were built in 2007) are missing Meta Language and suggested adding tag in the or on the html tag.
Wanting to "not mess anything up" and validate correctly, I read in **W3C's site and it said: ** "Always add a lang attribute to the html tag to set the default language of your page. If this is XHTML 1.x you should also use the xml:lang attribute (with the same value). Do not use the meta element with http-equiv set to Content-Language."
My current html leads like:
QUESTION:
I'm confused on how to add the Meta Language to my website given my current coding as I"m not a coder.Can you suggest if I should add this content-language info, and if so, what is the best way to do so, considering valid w3c markup for my document type?
Thank you!!!
Michelle -
thank you!
-
Yeah, I don't think you'll go wrong with "en". Glad to help, hope that answers your question
-
Thanks again George. So, I guess "en" or "en-us" is ok. Most of our customers are in the US by far, but we also have a smaller percent in Australia, Canada and the UK. But they all speak English.
That being said, maybe "en" is best?
Michelle
-
At least with Google, I doubt it makes a difference unless there are multiple languages on a page. If you use Chrome you'll see it auto-detects the language and offers to translate. It may only rank the page in a specific country or locale though. If you're aiming at Spanish speakers in the UK, it may be a little different.
-
Hi Michelle, "ll-cc" stands for "language-countrycode". So in the case of English, you can use "en-us" for English United States or "en-gb" for British English. I don't believe case matters (I have seen "en-US" and "en-GB" used too).
For your question, yes you can use:
You could also use:
Either one will work fine :). Which language are you targeting?
Here is some more reading from w3.org that seems more up-to-date, though I think you would be fine using one of the above methods.
-
The Bing Webmaster Central article where they discuss how to set the language for your pages is here.
-
Hi George,
Thanks for your prompt reply - and I agree - I'm sure this isn't a big factor, but when finding reports saying things are "wrong" - I'm trying to fix them for overall improvement.I noticed w3c says: Always add a lang attribute to the html tag to set the default language of your page. If this is XHTML 1.x you should also use the xml:lang attribute (with the same value).
So, is it best practice to add it (xml:lang) to this tag you suggested (is applicable to my document)?
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">And is "en" preferred over "ll-cc"?
Thanks again,
Michelle -
This is likely what you are looking for, but I don't think this is causing you any SEO problems.
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
-
Canonical tag on a large site
when would you reccomend using a canonical tag on a large site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cristiana.Solinas0 -
Code to Redirect Mobile Subdomain to Desktop Site
Hi Everyone, My client is switching from a mobile subdomain to a responsive site. All URLs are the same on mobile subdomain vs desktop so we just need a wildcard rule to redirect m. to www. Anyone have this wildcard redirect code for an .htaccess file? Much appreciated! Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kernmedia0 -
Why my site not ranking
Hello everyone, can anyone suggest me, where i am having problem in my site www.suntechengineers.com, i know content is less,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojathakar
but any other things that i am missing in my site? Is There any on page query please let me know, i need urgently getting up this,please help thanx in advance0 -
On Page Content. has a H2 Tag but should I also use H3 tags for the sub headings within this body of content
Hi Mozzers, My on page content comes under my H2 tag. I have a few subheadings within my content to help break it up etc and currently this is just underlined (not bold or anything) and I am wondering from an SEO perspective, should I be making these sub headings H3 tags. Otherwise , I just have 500-750 words of content under an H2 tag which is what I am currently doing on my landing pages. thanks pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Site re-design, full site domain A/B test, will we drop in rankings while leaking traffic
We are re-launching a client site that does very well in Google. The new site is on a www2 domain which we are going to send a controlled amount of traffic to, 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% to 100% over a 5 week period. This will lead to a reduction in traffic to the original domain. As I don't want to launch a competing domain the www2 site will not be indexed until 100% is reached. If Google sees the traffic numbers reducing over this period will we drop? This is the only part I am unsure of as the urls and site structure are the same apart from some new lower level pages which we will introduce in a controlled manner later? Any thoughts or experience of this type of re-launch would be much appreciated. Thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | leshonk0 -
PDF on financial site that duplicates ~50% of site content
I have a financial advisor client who has a downloadable PDF on his site that contains about 9 pages of good info. Problem is much of the content can also be found on individual pages of his site. Is it best to noindex/follow the pdf? It would be great to let the few pages of original content be crawlable, but I'm concerned about the duplicate content aspect. Thanks --
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 540SEO0 -
Need help with duplicate content. Same content; different locations.
We have 2 sites that will have duplicate content (e.g., one company that sells the same products under two different brand names for legal reasons). The two companies are in different geographical areas, but the client will put the same content on each page because they're the same product. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Accidently added a nofollow, noindex tag and then...
Hey guys, My first post here and ironically highlights a ridiculously stupid mistake! Ok, here's the deal... I started building links to one of my new page on a fairly good, old site (DA = >35). Before starting to build links, I added fresh new content, and while doing that, I accidentally added a "nofollow" and "noindex" tag to the page! Guess what, google DID de-index the page ! So the questions is (and YES, I did change the meta tags): Will google re-index the page with some good linking? Will it treat the page as a new, fresh page even though it was present for over a year? I had already started link building to that page, and now technically the links are pointing to a page that does not exist in the index, so once it does get re-indexed, will Google FLAG it as having too many links? Would I be ranking it as a new page? Will its previous ranking (for very few keywords) will come back? Thanks and Regards, Amod
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bonusjonathan0