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.
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!
-
Hi Gianluca, thanks for chiming in!
I will look into getting this setup. Should this solve our issue? It seems that currently, the hreflang setup for just the home page isn't working. Google is not showing the US site in Google US or showing the appropriate international site for Google in that specific country.
Any other tips? Hreflang setup for HTML will have to be applied for all pages, for all country-language sites, correct? Where does the canonical point to?
Lastly, if all of this is setup, do I remove country geo-targeting in Search Console?
Thanks!
-
I personally prefer hreflang set up in HTML code, especially because is much easier to verify and correct than when it is implemented in a sitemap file.
-
That's correct.
Long story - there is hreflang in HTML head and in xml sitemap. What's the difference? In HTML you can use same-site or cross-site links (between domains), in XML they are only in same domain. So in XML sitemap you can't use cross-site links (between different domains).
Also in SearchConsole you can set "international targeting" (SearchConsole -> Search Traffic -> International Targeting -> Country) for different sites.
I know that hreflang is little bit complicated but once you setup your first site correct then on next sites will be much faster.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply!
What you're saying is that we cannot reference different domains in the hreflang xml sitemap, is that correct? How do I then, make sure that the english version of the International Site doesn't show up for English Speakers in the US? Are you saying that for the US site, I only need basically one hreflang tag and no references to any other URLs?
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>
Here's the actual XML sitemaps that don't seem to be working according to the tested sitemap in Search Console. You can see the plain text there unless you view source code (as mentioned in Question 4).
- For the USA Site: http://www.shopcompex.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
- For the International Sites: https://www.compexstore.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
Do I need to just remove the USA domain from the International sitemap and all international domains from the USA sitemap?
I am getting an error in Search Console for both:
| This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location. |
Both referencing the different domains.
-
1. Look perfect. But i'm not sure that you can index in site X pages about site Y even in hreflang. You need to make test on some site. Please note - there is cross site canonical tag and this is ok. There is cross site alternate hreflang and this is ok. But i don't know about sitemap with links to other sites even in hreflang. You need to verify this in SearchConsole - upload sitemap and see for some warnings or errors there. Also don't forget that setup hreflang in HTML code too -> https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16 https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
2. Answer of this dependent from "validation" of previous question - can you setup sitemap of site X with links to site Y. IMHO you can't. So you must put sitemap about int.com to int.com site and usa.com on same site. Like your example and this is for usa.com site:
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>3. Yes, should be.
"Hreflang tags may not help you increase traffic; instead, the goal of using them is to serve the right content to the right users. They help search engines swap the correct version of the page into the SERP based on a user's location and language preferences. For information on how geotargeting can help with rankings, learn about ccTLDs."
https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag4. Can you show me this? Because your sitemap may miss XSL for showing proper. Or you may return different HTTP content type.
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
-
Multistore Sitemap
I use Magento 2 Multistore and have 2 stores set up with identical products, one for the EU and one for the US. The best practice is to allow Google to crawl both sites, but what about the sitemap? Should I only include one store? The reason I ask is that Google has recently started ignoring canonicalized URLs, so even though the second store is canonicalized, it could affect my rank. My rank did drop with the last update when this was rolled out, I stopped some canonicalized URLs from generating and my rank went back up (albeit not as high as before).
International SEO | | moon-boots0 -
International SEO setup issues canonical URL
My site is www.grocare.com for one region and in.grocare.com for another region. Both of them have the same content except the currency for particular regions. Someone told me that google will take the content as duplicate and not rank either. I have setup hreflang and targeted different regions for both in the search console. I read many article which say canonical urls need to be setup for international seo sites. But Im not sure how to setup canonical urls and whether they are the right way to go . i just don't want my content deranked. Now i have setup hreflang properly after asking the moz community itself. So im hoping to get some help with this query too. TIA
International SEO | | grocare0 -
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Tags for Multi-Regional Website English Language Only having URL Parameters
Dear friends, We have a multi-regional website in English language only having the country selector on the top of each page and it adds countrycode parameters on each url. Website is built in Magento 1.8 and having 1 store with multiple store views. There is no default store set in Magento as I discussed with developer. Content is same for all the countries and only currency is changed. In navigation there are urls without url parameters but when we change store from any page it add parameters in the url for same page hence there are total 7 URLs. 6 URLs for each page (with country parameters) and 1 master url (without parameters) and making content duplicity. We have implemented hreflang tags on each page with url parameters but for canonical we have implemented master page url as per navigation without url parameters Example on this page. I think this is correct for master page but we should use URL parameters in canonical tags for each counry url too and there should be only 1 canonical tag on each country page url. Currently all the country urls are having master page canoncial tag as per the example. Please correct me if I am wrong and **in this case what has to be done for master page? **as google is indexing the pages without parameters too. We are also using GEOIP redirection for each store with country IP detection and for rest of the countries which are not listed on the website we are redirecting to USA store. Earlier it was 301 but we changed it to 302. Hreflang tags are showing errors in SEMRush due to redirection but in GWT it's OK for some pages it's showing no return tags only. Should I use **x-default tags for hreflang and country selector only on home page like this or should I remove the redirection? **However some of the website like this using redirection but header check tool doesn't show the redirection for this and for our website it shows 302 redirection. Sorry for the long post but looking for your support, please.
International SEO | | spjain810 -
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 -
Hreflang tag on every page?
Hello Moz Community, I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/. For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated) From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags: /> For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
International hreflang - will this handle duplicate content?
The title says it all - if i have duplicate content on my US and UK website, will adding the hreflang tag help google figure out that they are duplicate for a reason and avoid any penalties?
International SEO | | ALLee1 -
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