Advanced Hreflang !
-
Hey Everyone:
We are currently implementing hreflang tags on our site, and we have many parameter pages with hreflang tags; however, I am afraid these may be counted as duplicate content without canonical tags.
href='http://example.com/de" hreflang="de" rel="alternate"
href='http://example.com/nl" hreflang="nl" rel="alternate"
href='http://example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" rel="alternate"
href='http://example.com/it" hreflang="it" rel="alternate"
I have two questions
1. On the parameter pages (which have hreflang tags like above) do we also need a canonical tag on example.com/utm_source_tpi pointing to example.com ?
2. On the homepage (page without the parameter), should I add a self referencing hreflang tag? (href="http://example.com/" hreflang="es")
Thanks so much for your help!
-K
-
Hi Kezzi:
If the the utm pages (which are duplicates of the original page) have self-referencing canonical tags, won't they still be duplicates of the original page?
For example, let's say we have:
example.com/ and example.com/utm_source=tpi
All these pages have hrelfang, but the pages with utm are duplicates of the original, so I would assume that we need to have example.com/utm_source=tpi have a canonical tag pointing to example.com/
In addition, example.com/nl/utm_source=tpi would have a canonical tag pointing to example.com/nl/
Thanks!
-
Hi!
First of all welcome to the community!
Regarding your question, I would implement a canonical which would self reference:
- on NL page for example example.com/nl/
- on DE page for example example.com/de/
- on the homepage example.com/
Regarding the hreflang implementation. You will always need to make a self reference in order to make it work. So for example on an inner page, called Sample you would have on all languages:
I hope this helps
Gr., Keszi
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
-
Rank regional homepages using canonicals and hreflangs
Here’s a situation I’ve been puzzling with for some time: The situation
Technical SEO | | dmduco
Please consider an international website targeting 3 regions. The real site has more regions, but I simplified the case for this question. screenshot1.png There is no default language. The content for each regional version is meant for that region only. The website.eu page is dynamic. When there is no region cookie, the page is identical to website.eu/nl/ (because Netherlands is the most important region) When there is a region cookie (set by a modal), there is a 302 redirect to the corresponding regional homepage What we want
We want regional Google to index the correct regional homepages (eg. website.eu/nl/ on google.nl), instead of website.eu.
Why? Because visitors surfing to website.eu sometimes tend to ignore the region modal and therefor browse the wrong version.
For this, I set up canonicals and hreflangs as described below: screenshot2.png The problem
It’s 40 days now since the above hreflangs and canonicals have been setup, but Google is still ranking website.eu instead of the regional homepages.
Search console’s report for website.eu: screenshot3.png Any ideas why Google doesn’t respect our canonical? Maybe I’m overlooking something in this setup (combination of hreflangs and canonicals might be confusing)? Should I remove the hreflangs on the dynamic page, because there is no self-referencing hreflang? Or maybe it’s because website.eu has gathered a lot of backlinks over the years, whereas the regional homepages have much less, which might be why Google chooses to ig nore the canonical signals? Or maybe it’s a matter of time and I just need to wait longer? Note: I’m aware the language subfolders (eg. /be_nl) are not according to Google’s recommendations. But I’ve seen similar setups (like adobe.com and apple.com) where the regional homepage is showing ok. Any help appreciated!0 -
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 -
My translated pages are categorized as subpages of the originals / Importance of hreflang tags
Hi there We have a website that is originally in German, but has an English translation for all pages.
Technical SEO | | Jess_Smunch
I recently created a crawl map for it, which showed that all our translated pages are indexed as subpages of the German originals. I wonder if this is normal, or if it will have a negative impact on our SEO. If they are subpages, will Google still index and rank them with the same importance as the originals?
If not, what can I do to make them standalone pages and not subpages? Also, we have a few issues with hreflang tags that we cannot fix easily as our CMS does not give us a flexible option for editing our code. I wonder how much impact hreflang tags have on our ranking and if we can just disregards these issues? We use Hubspot as a CMS, if that matters. Thanks for your feedback!0 -
Hreflang and possible duplicate content SEO issue
| 0 <a class="vote-down-off" title="This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful">down vote</a> favorite | Hey community, my first question here 🙂 Imagine there is a page with video, it has hreflang tags setup, to lead let's say German visitors to /de/ folder... So, on that German version of page, everything like menus, navigation and such are in German, but the video is the same, the title of the video (H1 tag) is the same, <title></code></strong> and <strong><code>meta description</code></strong> is the same as on the original English page. It means that general (English) page and German version of it has the same key content in English.</p> <p>To me it seems to be a SEO duplicate content issue. As I know, Google doesn't think that content is duplicate, if it is properly translated to other language.</p> <p>Does my explained case mean that the content will be detected by Google as duplicate?</p> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></title> |
Technical SEO | | poiseo0 -
How important is using hreflang if u have plenty of other geo signals ?
HI How important is it to use the hreflang attributes and supporting sitemaps (and do you need both) ? Since if sites are being set up on country specific tlds (but on top of WP multisite network.domain.com environment) and geotargeted in GWT, as well as country meta tags and local schema etc etc that should send enough signals shouldnt it 🙂 ? Implementation of hreflang seems like an absolute technical nightmare All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Hreflang Tag great for Google, what about Bing or others?
I've read that the Hreflang Tag is all the rave for International solutions on a per page basis. I haven't read much about what International agencies are using for non-Google search engines such as Bing. Is the common language meta tags the only solution? would love to see an article that addresses this
Technical SEO | | MikeSEOTruven0 -
SEO question: Need help on rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Hi all, we have webcontent in 3 languages (official belgian yellow pages), we use a separate domain per language, these are also our brands.
Technical SEO | | TruvoDirectories
ex. for the restaurant Wagamamahttp://www.goudengids.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to nl-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to fr-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to en-be The trouble is that sometimes I see the incorrect urls appearing when doing a search in google, ex. when searching on google.be (dutch=nederlands=nl-be) I see the www.pagesdor.be version appearing (french) I was trying to find a fix for this within https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=nl , but this only seems to apply to websites which use SUBdomains for language purposes. I'm not sure if can work for DOMAINS. Can anyone help me out? Kind regards0 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0