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.
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
-
Hi everyone,
got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag.
I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently)
Question:
Can I use hreflang in that case like:Many thanks in advance
-
Sure, I did this: http://bfy.tw/2hTu
-
Hi Dmitrii,
can you perhaps tell me the source, where you found the supported annotations above. Many Thanks
-
My answer is the correct. See what I replied above to Dmitrii
-
Lol! You're right. I was indeed thinking about Belgium and not Netherlands

-
It's a cultural thing. I'm that province of Italy people talk or Italian or German, so if you want to target both with your multilingual site you must tell it to Google with hreflang, even if it is not listed in the ISO chart.
you do the same for targeting Spanish speaking people in the usa, for instance.
-
Gianluca - I guess this time it's my turn: As far as I know they only have one official language in the Netherlands (Dutch) - I guess you refer to Belgium (3 official languages Dutch/French/German).
It's a common error to make this mistake - but the difference is easy to spot: Belgium is qualified for Euro '16 - unlike the Netherlands

-
Hi Gianluca,
Thank you for your reply. In fact I'm refering to that exact region. The difference to your CH examples are though, that in Switzerland, the 3 language regions are not the exact same "location".
In my case they are though so I got a bit confused.
So basically Im not saying, a specific region in Switzerland speaks French, another German and another Italian, but I say the exact same location/region speaks German and Italian.
-
Well, I do see the ones you mentioned on that list, but not it-it or de-it.
-
Yes, it exists (it is Alto Agide/South Tirol), and it's the same case of Netherlands (fr-NL and de-NL) or Switzerland (it-CH, fr-CH and de-CH)
-
Yes, you can.
-
Interesting. Google search doesn't return anything on this locale.
-
yes, sure about that
-
Are you sure that locale exists?
-
Hi Dmitrii,
many thanks for your reply. Great list, unfortunately I can't find my case. Though I think this list is not complete. E.x. I miss the the french speaking part in Italy for example,...
Helpful anyway though.
-
Hi there.
I found this list of all available locales, if locales you're trying to do are in this list, then go ahead, otherwise it won't work.
P.S. List might be old and updated by now, but i don't think so.
- af-ZA
- am-ET
- ar-AE
- ar-BH
- ar-DZ
- ar-EG
- ar-IQ
- ar-JO
- ar-KW
- ar-LB
- ar-LY
- ar-MA
- arn-CL
- ar-OM
- ar-QA
- ar-SA
- ar-SY
- ar-TN
- ar-YE
- as-IN
- az-Cyrl-AZ
- az-Latn-AZ
- ba-RU
- be-BY
- bg-BG
- bn-BD
- bn-IN
- bo-CN
- br-FR
- bs-Cyrl-BA
- bs-Latn-BA
- ca-ES
- co-FR
- cs-CZ
- cy-GB
- da-DK
- de-AT
- de-CH
- de-DE
- de-LI
- de-LU
- dsb-DE
- dv-MV
- el-GR
- en-029
- en-AU
- en-BZ
- en-CA
- en-GB
- en-IE
- en-IN
- en-JM
- en-MY
- en-NZ
- en-PH
- en-SG
- en-TT
- en-US
- en-ZA
- en-ZW
- es-AR
- es-BO
- es-CL
- es-CO
- es-CR
- es-DO
- es-EC
- es-ES
- es-GT
- es-HN
- es-MX
- es-NI
- es-PA
- es-PE
- es-PR
- es-PY
- es-SV
- es-US
- es-UY
- es-VE
- et-EE
- eu-ES
- fa-IR
- fi-FI
- fil-PH
- fo-FO
- fr-BE
- fr-CA
- fr-CH
- fr-FR
- fr-LU
- fr-MC
- fy-NL
- ga-IE
- gd-GB
- gl-ES
- gsw-FR
- gu-IN
- ha-Latn-NG
- he-IL
- hi-IN
- hr-BA
- hr-HR
- hsb-DE
- hu-HU
- hy-AM
- id-ID
- ig-NG
- ii-CN
- is-IS
- it-CH
- it-IT
- iu-Cans-CA
- iu-Latn-CA
- ja-JP
- ka-GE
- kk-KZ
- kl-GL
- km-KH
- kn-IN
- kok-IN
- ko-KR
- ky-KG
- lb-LU
- lo-LA
- lt-LT
- lv-LV
- mi-NZ
- mk-MK
- ml-IN
- mn-MN
- mn-Mong-CN
- moh-CA
- mr-IN
- ms-BN
- ms-MY
- mt-MT
- nb-NO
- ne-NP
- nl-BE
- nl-NL
- nn-NO
- nso-ZA
- oc-FR
- or-IN
- pa-IN
- pl-PL
- prs-AF
- ps-AF
- pt-BR
- pt-PT
- qut-GT
- quz-BO
- quz-EC
- quz-PE
- rm-CH
- ro-RO
- ru-RU
- rw-RW
- sah-RU
- sa-IN
- se-FI
- se-NO
- se-SE
- si-LK
- sk-SK
- sl-SI
- sma-NO
- sma-SE
- smj-NO
- smj-SE
- smn-FI
- sms-FI
- sq-AL
- sr-Cyrl-BA
- sr-Cyrl-CS
- sr-Cyrl-ME
- sr-Cyrl-RS
- sr-Latn-BA
- sr-Latn-CS
- sr-Latn-ME
- sr-Latn-RS
- sv-FI
- sv-SE
- sw-KE
- syr-SY
- ta-IN
- te-IN
- tg-Cyrl-TJ
- th-TH
- tk-TM
- tn-ZA
- tr-TR
- tt-RU
- tzm-Latn-DZ
- ug-CN
- uk-UA
- ur-PK
- uz-Cyrl-UZ
- uz-Latn-UZ
- vi-VN
- wo-SN
- xh-ZA
- yo-NG
- zh-CN
- zh-HK
- zh-MO
- zh-SG
- zh-TW
- zu-ZA
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
-
Traffic drop after hreflang tags added
We operate one company with two websites each serving a different location, one targeting EU customers and the other targeting US customers. thespacecollective.com (EU customers) thespacecollective.com/us/ (US customers) We have always had canonical tags in place, but we added the following hreflang tags two weeks ago (apparently this is best practice); EU site (thespacecollective.com) US site (thespacecollective.com/us/) Literally the same day we added the above hreflang tags our traffic dropped off a cliff (we have lost around 70-80% on the EU site, and after a minor recovery, 50% on the US site). Now, my first instinct is to remove the tags entirely and go back to just using canonical, but if this is truly best practice, that could do more damage than good. This is the only change that has been made in recent weeks regarding SEO. Is there something obvious that I am missing because it looks correct to me?
International SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Hreflang Alternate & Pagination
Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.
International SEO | | ABullis0 -
Is this setup of Hreflang xml sitemap correct?
Hi, I'm trying to setup hreflang for 2 domains. One is purely a US site and the other domain has the language-country as subdomains. For example: http://www.websiteUSA.com (Targets English - USA) https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA (Targets English - Canada) https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA (Targets French - Canada) https://www.websiteINT/es (Targets Spanish) ..and so on and so forth for about 12 of these international URLs. I created an XML sitemap that looks something like this: <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><url><loc>http://www.websiteUSA.com</loc></url></urlset> <url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA</loc></url> <url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA</loc></url> Question 1: Is this correct? In my actual file, I have all the countries listed and self-referencing. Question 2: I'm hosting this file at https://www.websiteINT.com/hreflang.xml AND at http://www.websiteUSA.com/hreflang.xml. Is this correct? Question 3: Will this help the SERPs direct english speakers from the US to http://www.websiteUSA.com while show SERPs for say English Speakers in Canada to https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA? Question 4: For some reason, when I put up the xml site, it only listed each URL once instead of the full XML file. Should I have uploaded a text file instead? It doesn't seem to render correctly. Thank you!
International SEO | | SylviaH0 -
International SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.
Hi! My UK based company just recently made the decision to let the US market operate their ecommerce business independently. Initially, both markets were operating off the same domain using sub-directories (i.e: www.brandname.com/en-us/ , www.brandname.com/en-gb/ ) Now that the US team have broken away from the domain - they are now using www.brandnameUSA.com while the UK continues to use www.brandname.com/en-gb/. The content is similar across both domains - however, the new US website has been able to consolidate several product variations onto single product pages where the UK website is using individual product pages for each variation. We have placed a geo-filter on the main domain which is 301 redirecting North American traffic looking for www.brandname.com to www.brandnameUSA.com However, since the domain change has taken place, product pages from the original domain are now indexing alongside the new US websites product pages in US search results. The UK website wants to be the default destination for all international traffic. My question is - how do we correctly setup hrlang tags across two separate TLDs and how do we handle a situation where multiple product pages on the "default" domain have been consolidated into one product page on the new USA domain? This is how we are currently handling it: "en-us" href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" /> href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" />
International SEO | | alexcbrands0 -
Two versions of a website with different languages - Best way to do it?
I'm working on a website for a Swedish artist and her page is in Swedish, everything is in Swedish on the site, even though it's not a lot of text on the site. We would like to have the site in English too, or another version of the site in English on a separate domain, what's the best way to proceed from here? The domain name is a .se (swedish domain), would it be better to create a another domain and host the english version of the site on a .com domain? Or will we bump into problems with duplicate content if we create a replica of the swedish site in english. We're using wordpress and I know that there's translation plugins out there, is that a good option? I'm a bit clueless on how to proceed and would love some help or guidance here.
International SEO | | Fisken0 -
Showing different content according to different geo-locations on same URL
We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language). For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia. Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL. How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives? Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL? What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan? Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for? Kindest Regards L.B.
International SEO | | seoec0 -
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site
OK, 2 primary questions for a multilingual site. This specific site has 2 language so I'll use that for the examples. 1 - Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag Necessary? The first is regarding the correct implementation of hreflang, and whether or not I should have a self-referencing hreflang tag. In other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), I am uncertain whether the source code should contain the second line below: Obviously the Spanish version should reference the English version, but does it need to reference itself? I have seen both versions implemented, with seemingly good results, but I want to know the best practice if it exists. 2 - Canonical of Current Language or Default Language? The second questions is regarding which canonical to use on the secondary language pages. I am aware of the update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines recently that state not to use canonical, but they say not to do it because everyone was messing it up, not because it shouldn't be done. So, in other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), which of the two following canonicals is correct? OR For this question, you can assume that (A) the English version of the site is our default and (B) the content is identical. Thanks guys, feel free to ask any qualifiers you think are relevant.
International SEO | | KaneJamison1 -
SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English. The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's. Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ? As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca
International SEO | | vanvallejo0