Href lang and multilingual question
-
Greetings Moz-Hive mind! I'm hoping you can help me on the internationalisation conundrum below;
We currently have a website with three distinct 'locales' US, SEA and UK we automatically redirect customers using IP recognition to a locale which matches, we also determine their currency based on IP. The issue we currently have is a lot of duplicate content and no use of href lang or rel=canonical tags etc...
My proposed structure would be to create a locale based directory for the three locales we offer.
- / - being US and most other Worldwide
- /uk - being UK
- /as - being Hong Kong and other Asian territories.
How would you suggest we set up the href lang tags for these? Because technically there are going to be multiple language possibilities within. Our main customers are English only if this helps.
Also as a secondary question, how should I set up the Google Search Console settings for each of these directories?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Thank you so very much!
-
Correct.
About using the hreflang="x-default" or the hreflang="en", that depends if you are interested in targeting also users not searching in English.
If not, you can go for the hreflang="en" option.
-
OK that makes sense. So let me get this straight;
1. USA/Worldwide version - /
- hreflang="en" (Can I use "x-default" here instead?)
- no targeting within Search Console
2. SEA version - /as/
- hreflang="en-HK" (repeat for all SEA territories)
- no targeting within Search Console
3. UK version - /uk/
- hreflang="en-GB"
- targeting United Kingdom on Search Console- use a selector pop up using IP sniffing to detect if the customer is viewing the wrong version of the page/site.
-
A solution could be implementing an alert system (Amazon style), so that people with those characteristics visiting the website and having eventually landed on it (but on / and /uk/ URLs) albeit they are located in HK or other EAS country, they are alerted that the best version of the site for them is the /as/ one.
You can do it via IP detection. Don't do automatic redirection, though.
-
Just to let you know, none of the above has been implemented yet, I am still planning the best course of action.
The majority of our clients browsing from Hong Kong have their language set to "en-US" and "en-GB". Is there a way to target these users without showing them the USA version of the site?
The USA version of the site needs to be the global one because the majority of our clients are based there.
Would you be willing to take this conversation offline into email? I would very much appreciate the help.
-
Mmm... question: do those users visiting the site from Hong Kong or from USA and/or GB?
Because if that is the situation, then you should check out if you have:
- Well implemented the hreflang;
- If you have geo-targeted the /uk/ subfolder to Great Britain/United Kingdom in Search Console.
Said that, following the logic I presented in my first answer, the hreflang="en" should suggest only "/" "(USA) URLs, because you told me that you want the USA version of your site to be also the "Global" one.
If it so, then the "/as/" cannot be paired to the hreflang="en" annotation, because you will have two identical hreflang (hreflang="en") suggesting two different URLs, and that would be wrong and confusing Google so much that it can ignore all the hreflang you may have implemented.
However, in the "home page" of the /as/ subfolder, you should have these hreflang annotations:
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-HK" href="http://www.domain.com/as/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AU" href="http://www.domain.com/as/"></rel="alternate">
- REPEAT IT SO TO COVER ALL EAS COUNTRIES
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="http://www.domain.com/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="http://www.domain.com/uk/"></rel="alternate">
- <rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.domain.com/"></rel="alternate">
-
Thanks for your detailed response Gianluca! Very helpful.
One question, am I also able to include hreflang="en" under the /as/ subfolder? Looking at Analytics and 80% of our Hong Kong clients are browsing in either en-US or en-GB (complicated).
-
Your situation is a tricky one, because the SEA area is not a country, and therefore cannot be geo-targeted via Search Console.
To use the hreflang in order to suggest Google to show the /as/ subfolder is possible, though. Simply, you have to implement as many hreflang="en-[Code of the Country] as many are the countries included in the SEA area.
Then, in order to have the USA version being the global one:
-
You should not geo-target it toward USA in Search Console;
-
You should use the hreflang="en" and not the hreflang="en-US" (that will target only users from USA).
-
As an option, you can
-
set up the hreflang="en-US" to suggest google to show / to people using English in the USA;
-
set up the hreflang="x-default" to suggest google to show / to everybody (using English or not), who are not geo-targeted by other hreflang annotations.
Obviously, for UK, you must use the hreflang="en-GB".
-
-
Hey Dmitrii, sorry I should have mentioned in the question I understand how href lang works. I am more asking for the best practice implementation when the language might possibly vary? With US and Worldwide and the Hong Kong and Asian territories.
-
Hi there.
Well, you setup hreflang very normally - on each of those language based pages specify rel="alternate" hreflang="whatever" href="matching url".Refer to this video from Google, they explain pretty good what's what and when to use which version: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
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
-
HTTPS 301 Redirect Question
Hi, I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB. Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic? Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | opstart0 -
Medical / Health Content Authority - Content Mix Question
Greetings, I have an interesting challenge for you. Well, I suppose "interesting" is an understatement, but here goes. Our company is a women's health site. However, over the years our content mix has grown to nearly 50/50 between unique health / medical content and general lifestyle/DIY/well being content (non-health). Basically, there is a "great divide" between health and non-health content. As you can imagine, this has put a serious damper on gaining ground with our medical / health organic traffic. It's my understanding that Google does not see us as an authority site with regard to medical / health content since we "have two faces" in the eyes of Google. My recommendation is to create a new domain and separate the content entirely so that one domain is focused exclusively on health / medical while the other focuses on general lifestyle/DIY/well being. Because health / medical pages undergo an additional level of scrutiny per Google - YMYL pages - it seems to me the only way to make serious ground in this hyper-competitive vertical is to be laser targeted with our health/medical content. I see no other way. Am I thinking clearly here, or have I totally gone insane? Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Can multiple geotargeting hreflang tags be set in one URL? International SEO question
Hi All, Thank you for this great post! I have a question please. If i target www.onedirect.co.nl/en/ in English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, are the tags below correct? English for Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg: http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-be" /> http://www.example.co.nl/en/" hreflang="en-lu" /> AND Targeting Holland and Belgium in Dutch: Pour la page www.onedirect.co.nl on peut inclure ce tag: http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-nl" /> http://www.example.co.nl" hreflang="nl-be" /> thanks a lot for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Onedirect_uk0 -
Complicated Duplicate Content Question...but it's fun, so please help.
Quick background: I have a page that is absolutely terrible, but it has links and it's a category page so it ranks. I have a landing page which is significantly - a bizillion times - better, but it is omitted in the search results for the most important query we need. I'm considering switching the content of the two pages, but I have no idea what they will do. I'm not sure if it will cause duplicate content issues or what will happen. Here are the two urls: Terrible page that ranks (not well but it's what comes up eventually) https://kemprugegreen.com/personal-injury/ Far better page that keeps getting omitted: https://kemprugegreen.com/location/tampa/tampa-personal-injury-attorney/ Any suggestions (other than just wait on google to stop omitting the page, because that's just not going to happen) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Sites in multiple countries using same content question
Hey Moz, I am looking to target international audiences. But I may have duplicate content. For example, I have article 123 on each domain listed below. Will each content rank separately (in US and UK and Canada) because of the domain? The idea is to rank well in several different countries. But should I never have an article duplicated? Should we start from ground up creating articles per country? Some articles may apply to both! I guess this whole duplicate content thing is quite confusing to me. I understand that I can submit to GWT and do geographic location and add rel=alternate tag but will that allow all of them to rank separately? www.example.com www.example.co.uk www.example.ca Please help and thanks so much! Cole
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Ecommerce SEO URL Structure Questions
| I am in the process of developing a new Magento ecommerce store. Take for instance this website is in the apparel industry and i have the following main categories. Clothing Shoes Accessories Beauty Sub categories for clothing would be: Dresses Pants jeans Tops Products would be: Kelly Maxi dresses What is the best SEO Structure for this? Main categories obviously: www.example.com/clothing Sub Categories:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
www.example.com/clothing/dresses Or www.example.com/dresses (Zappos seem to pursue the second type) Products:
www.example.com/clothing/dresses/kelly-maxi-dresses/ Or www.example.com/kelly-maxi-dresses ? Which one would be the best way to structure your site? Also what about filters that available in category pages? Say if i were to filter by color. what would be the best URL? I am sure canonical tag is needed here. New to Ecommerce SEO so i need some guidance! |0 -
Another footer question
Hi to all, Maybe this question is already answered (in that case sorry) but I didn't find it. Currently, with the latest changes is really useful to have a 'seo footer'. I mean, it seems that can give you more problems that benefits. In my case the idea of the footer is only to obtain more traffic. Having this in mind, I'm right thinking that is better don't write anything ? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nsimpson0 -
Different domains for multilingual website
Hey guys, A site that I'm currently working on as different domains for each website language. So for example: word1word2.com for the english version word3word4.com for the french version word5word6.com for spanish version .... Is it better to move all of the different languages to the same domain and use subfolders for each language /fr/... Please note that the domains being used bring in organic traffic as well as they are EMDs. Thank You.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruLee0