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" />
-
You are using bad the x-default annotation (I must admit, though, that I did not completely understood the code you copy/pasted in your question).
The x-default is meant for showing to Google what URL to show to those users, who are not explicitly targeted by a dedicated version of the website.
For instance, if we are targeting both USA and UK, but we know that the USA version has traction also in other countries like AU, NZ, South Africa and Spain, then we could use the x-default so to suggest Google that the USA URLs should be shown to all people independently of the language (in my example, not only English speaking users, but also Spanish speaking ones) and geography (not only the USA, but also all the others countries). The only exception will be the UK, because with the hreflang="en-GB" we are telling Google to shown the UK version of the site to English speaking users in Great Britain.
The only solution I see in your case is consistency between the two versions. You must choose with which architecture option to go and use just that. Only after you should think in the hreflang implementation.
-
Hi Dirk,
Thank you for your response. The US team has implemented the hreflang tags at the homepage level but not at the product and internal page level for the reasons you mention. The UK team however HAS implemented hreflang tags across all their pages and is designating the "brandname.com/en-gb/" site as the x-default AND the alternate for general EN language.
Curious to know your thoughts on this approach and how you would implement.
Thanks,
Alex
-
The solution you propose is not going to work. Hreflang is used to identify different language versions of the same page (with minor variations). This implies that each page has a one to one relation with it's equivalent in the other languages.
This isn't the case on your site - the category pages on your US site do not correspond with the category pages on the en-gb site - you can't use the hreflang here (1 page US = 3 pages in en-gb).
You could do this on homepage, product pages and all pages that are more or less equivalent in all languages.
Please also note that hreflang is reciprocal - if you have following hreflang's
you have to put this code on both pages - on http://www.brandname.com/en-gb/product-a & https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/product-a - it's no use to only put it on the en-gb version as you currently do.
I also have doubts about "es-mx" for a site which is in entirely in English.
Dirk
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
-
Multi National Company that Doesn't Want to Implement International SEO
I have got an interesting situation where I have a client who wants to merge two ccTLD's into one. They currently have .fi and .com and they want to merge both sites to .com .fi is for finland and .com for USA. They want to merge the sites and the original plan was to use subfolders for each country and pair with hreflang. However the team now wants to merge both sites with NO subfolders differentiating between finland or the US. My understanding of International SEO that this is the most opposite from best practices, but is there any specific reasons why they wouldn't want to do this? I'm struggling to find any specific reasons that I can cite to the client that would argue why we should at least do a subfolder or some sort of international seo strategy.
International SEO | | JKhoo1 -
Multilingual webshop SEO
Hi, I have a question concerning multilingual SEO for webshops. This is the case: the root domain is example.be, which has several subdomains. One of these subdomains is shop.example.be which is used for two webshops (Dutch and French), being shop.example.be/nl and shop.example.be/fr .
International SEO | | Mat_C
The other root domain is example.lu (for Luxemburg) which is only used for the subdomain for the Luxemburg webshop in French, being shop.example.lu/fr.
The content on the .lu/fr webshop is a small part of the content on the .be/fr webshop, and the product descriptions are the same and are both of course in French. The webshops will be redesigned and restructured, and the question is what to do with the .lu/fr webshop. There are two possibilities: Integrate this webshop for Luxemburg in the existing .be webshop, since most of the products are the same and the .lu webshop doesn't get a lot of visitors because of Luxemburg being a small country. The only thing to do then would be setting up a 301 from the .lu webshop to the .be/fr version to transfer link value.
People in Luxemburg already sometimes get pages from the .be/fr webshop in the SERP anyway because these already have a bigger authority than the .lu/fr pages. Keep the .lu/fr webshop and use hreflang tags so the correct pages with similar content are shown in the correct country. I know that when using different TLD's this normally isn't an issue anyway, so implementing hreflang tags even isn't really necessary. Please feel free to share your thoughts about what would be the best approach. Thanks!1 -
An International SEO Conundrum
Hello all, I'm looking for opinions on this. Imagine there is a website example.com in English and the company 'Example' wanted to translate some of the pages (not not all) in to Russian. So they set up example.com/ru and translate the key pages into Russian. But half of the pages on.com/ru are left in English and there are no plans to translate them. How would you handle the pages in Engish on .com/ru? My thoughts are that they should: Canonicalise to the same versions on .com, and... Remove RU hreflang tags from the pages on .com/ru which are in English Otherwise, users searching in English with Russian browser settings could land on a page in English but then navigate to a translated page in Russian (+the menu navigation items will be in Russian) = bad UX. Not to mention they would be telling Google a page is in Russain but Google would be crawling English. So IMO, the best option is to use canonicals for this so that the .com version of the page is indexed. Then when a user lands after searching in English they will always be served English pages within that session. If English speakers/searchers land on the .com/ru page that would lead to a website half in one lang and half in another. I'm aware that Google recommends not using rel="canonical" across country or language versions of your site, but I believe they are making that recommendation based on an assumption that all pages are going to be translated to another language. In this case, there is no intention to do that, ever. Thanks for your thoughts and opinions. Cheers, Gill.
International SEO | | Cannetastic0 -
International SEO Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
/en-us/ Outranking Root Domain and other hreflang errors
I'm working with a new site that has a few regional sites in subdirectories /en-us/, /en-au/, etc and just noticed that some of our interior pages (ourdomain.com/en-us/interior-page1/ ) are outranking the equivalent ourdomain.com/interior-page1. This only occurs in some SERPS while others correctly display the non-regional result. I was told we have hreflang tags implemented correctly in the meta information of each of our pages but have yet to research deeply. Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily? Any help would be appreciated as I am a little lost. Cheers, Andrew
International SEO | | AndyMitty0 -
Canonical and hreflang mess of international desktop and mobile site versions
Hello, I have an interesting case and I am lost in it. There are two versions of the site: desktop and mobile. And there are also international versions: English and Spanish. I'm stuck at implementation of canonical tags. Currently my setup has the following: English (default) desktop page has these: English Mobile page has these: Spanish Desktop version: Spanish Mobile version: But I somewhat feel that I messed the things... Could you guys point me to what I did wrong and explain how to set it right? Also, if you know URLs of blog posts or articles, where similar case is explained - share with me please.
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
Which hreflang tag to use for .eu domain
Hi there, We're trying to solve a problem with one of our domains, we have a .eu CCTLD and we're trying to implement hreflang tags. On our US and UK sites, we use "en-us" and "en-gb", but it's not clear how to approach this european problem, as there is not a "en-eu" tag. The site is in English, but serves several European countries speaking different languages. What's the best hreflang code to use in this situation? Any help much appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | dennis.globalsign0 -
How to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries?
Dear all, what is the best way to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries? What must I add to my code of websites my .nl domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? What must I add to my code of websites my .be domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | HMK-NL3