Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    6
    1829
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • john_marketade
      john_marketade last edited by

      Hello,

      I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article).  My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit.  One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags.  My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else?  Any other thoughts are appreciated.  Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly.

      Thanks!Lauryn

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • gfiorelli1
        gfiorelli1 @john_marketade last edited by

        Yes, your own second guess is the correct one.

        The hreflang in URL based, not domain base, so you have to specify it for every single URL that needs it.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • john_marketade
          john_marketade @MattAntonino last edited by

          Thank you so much.

          Does it suffice if we put this code in the header across the site, or does each unique url need to have a specialized url in the code.

          Ex:

          Is the following good for the entire site:

          Vs.

          AND

          AND

          Etc...up to 100+ pages....

          gfiorelli1 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • gfiorelli1
            gfiorelli1 last edited by

            First of all remember that the hreflang annotation is not necessarily needed in every page.
            Said that, it really depends on your devs facilities what method to use, if in-code or using the sitemaps.

            Both work fine, and what you should not do is using both at the same time, because the possibility of creating contradictory hreflang annotations increases.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • MattAntonino
              MattAntonino last edited by

              It depends on the setup of your site, to be honest.

              If you have a Wordpress, Joomla, etc. with really easy access header sections that you can put the code in once and it's done forevermore no matter what pages are added, that's the simplest way.

              If your dev can script it to add to each page through the sitemap, that's also a one & done way.

              The only thing you really don't want to do is have to add a hreflang tag to every new page you add to the site. As long as you can avoid that, you should be right. We had a client add it to their sitemap but the sitemap wasn't auto-generating the tag so each time they updated they had to re-implement the tags. That was a frustrating time ... now we've got it automatically updating so it's much easier to maintain.

              john_marketade 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • john4math
                john4math last edited by

                I think all the implementations work just about the same.  We chose to do it in our sitemaps because that was the easiest for our developer to implement.  You should choose one or the other, there's no need to do multiple implementations.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Kingalan1

                  Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page

                  My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
                  -Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
                  -If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
                  -Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
                  -I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
                  | Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
                  | Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
                  | Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
                  | Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
                  | 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                  0
                • vtmoz

                  What are best page titles for sub-domain pages?

                  Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
                  0
                • Caro-O

                  Using hreflang for international pages - is this how you do it?

                  My client is trying to achieve a global presence in select countries, and then track traffic from their international pages in Google Analytics. The content for the international pages is pretty much the same as for USA pages, but the form and a few other details are different due to how product licensing has to be set up. I don’t want to risk losing ranking for existing USA pages due to issues like duplicate content etc. What is the best way to approach this? This is my first foray into this and I’ve been scanning the MOZ topics but a number of the conversations are going over my head,so suggestions will need to be pretty simple 🙂 Is it a case of adding hreflang code to each page and creating different URLs for tracking. For example:
                  URL for USA: https://company.com/en-US/products/product-name/
                  URL for Canada: https://company.com/en-ca/products/product-name /
                  URL for German Language Content: https://company.com/de/products/product-name /
                  URL for rest of the world: https://company.com/en/products/product-name /

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caro-O
                  1
                • 94501

                  Better to 301 or de-index 403 pages

                  Google WMT recently found and called out a large number of old unpublished pages as access denied errors. The pages are tagged "noindex, follow."  These old pages are in Google's index. At this point, would it better to 301 all these pages or submit an index removal request or what? Thanks... Darcy

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
                  0
                • TjeerdvZ

                  Hreflang and paginated page

                  Hi, I can not seem to find good documentation about the use of hreflang and paginated page when using rel=next , rel=prev
                  Does any know where to find decent documentatio?, I could only find documentation about pagination and hreflang when using canonicals on the paginated page. I have doubts on what is the best option: The way tripadvisor does it:
                  http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-oa390-Corsica-Hotels.html
                  Each paginated page is referring to it's hreflang paginated page, for example: So should the hreflang refer to the pagined specific page or should it refer to the "1st" page? in this case:
                  http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-Corsica-Hotels.html Looking foward to your suggestions.

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
                  0
                • WMCA

                  Canonical tag + HREFLANG vs NOINDEX: Redundant?

                  Hi, We launched our new site back in Sept 2013 and to control indexation and traffic, etc we only allowed the search engines to index single dimension pages such as just category, brand or collection but never both like category + brand, brand + collection or collection + catergory We are now opening indexing to double faceted page like category + brand and the new tag structure would be: For any other facet we're including a "noindex, follow" meta tag. 1. My question is if we're including a "noindex, follow" tag to select pages do we need to include a canonical or hreflang tag afterall? Should we include it either way for when we want to remove the "noindex"? 2. Is the x-default redundant? Thanks for any input. Cheers WMCA

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA
                  0
                • Bryan_Loconto

                  When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?

                  What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto
                  0
                • AndrewY

                  Max # of Products / Links per Page on E-Commerce Site

                  We are getting ready to re-launch our e-commerce site and are trying to decide how many products to list per category page.  Some of of our category pages have upwards of 100 products.  While I'd love to list ALL the products on the root category page (to reduce hassle for customer, to index more products on a higher PR page), I'm a little worried about having it be too long, and containing too many on-page links. Would love some guidance on: Maximum number of internal links on a page If Google frowns on really long category pages Anything else I should be considering when making this decision Thanks for your input!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewY
                  2

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.