International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
-
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help.
We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us.
Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page?
So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different?
Example:
- General page: www.example.com/estate-car
- US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon
Hreflang tags:
Would that be the correct implementation?
Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
-
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.
Great - that makes sense. I will add en-gb hreflang markup too.
You raise some really good points about organisations having to think clearly about the need to undertake multi-regional / multi-lingual SEO and the potential implications of this. In our situation we've come to the conclusion that there is a business case to undertake this venture. When I joined there was already a US office and a few pages written for the US already published on our website in a different design language. Fortunately these pages were recently created and set not to allow crawling. If they were to be indexed at best they may not rank and at worst they may actually interfere with our other page rankings - as well as causing confusion for users (duplicate product / contact / client pages, different navigation structures, designs etc). In the end we decided the best approach would to be to internationalise our website and target these pages to the region / language they were designed for. But yes definitely has been a challenge!
-
In your original post, you wrote that you are a "UK-centric business". I would think you would want to be as specific as possible to make sure the search engines know to serve the most relevant pages to the UK audience. So, yes, I would definitely include a self-referencing hreflang tag. It also simplifies your process because you can just copy-and-paste the hreflang tags between the versions of the page, with no editing (you put the same exact set of tags on the British page as you do on the American).
However, I'm really only responding to your "how" question. There is also an implicit question of whether you should be doing this. I have to say that from recent experience, no matter how thorough we are with hreflang tags, the search engines inevitably serve up pages across the desired locales. For my brand, I have Australian links showing up in US searches, and US links showing up in British searches, etc. This is even with correct hreflang implementation. In our case, it is a necessity to have multiple localized sites, because we carry different inventory, at different prices, and with different policies in each region. But if that wasn't the case, I would not localize my site between US, British, and Australian English just for language variances. That is a subjective decision, but I have so many problems coming from the wrong pages being served in the wrong geographies, despite thorough hreflang tagging, that I would be very hesitant to create more localizations than absolutely necessary. This wasn't your question, I realize, and also this is purely subjective, but passing along for consideration.
-
Great - thanks for your response.
So we should include x-default markup on the relevant pages (in addition to en-us hreflang tags) to signal to the search engines to show the .com urls to those who do not have the browser language setting set to US-English and the .com/us urls to those who do?
If we don't have specific UK pages do we need to add href lang en-gb markup since x-default covers it?
-
You would want the exact same hreflang tags on both versions of each page. So, that means each has a self-referencing tag, plus an alternate tag pointing to the sister page in another locale, plus an x-default tag. The hreflang tags basically tell the search engines whcih version of the page is appropriate for which locales, and when they are on a page in one locale, it tells the search engine where it can find the equivalent pages for other locales, as well as which one is the "x-default" for any locales you haven't specified.
-
Thanks for your quick reply seoelevated! We don't actually have any specific UK pages at the moment. The main site (written in British English) is www.example.com and is where all our traffic currently goes. We have decided to build specific US pages at subfolder www.example.com/us.
I presume in this scenario it would be good practice to add x-default markup on the .com while adding hreflang en-us to the US pages?
-
Yes, that looks correct. However, I would suggest adding two more hreflang tags to each page. One for "en-gb" (pointing to your UK desired version) and one for "x-default" (pointing to whichever version you would prefer for any other nonspecified locales. You will want all 4 of these on each of the two pages (so each page would include a self-referencing tag. These 2 additional ones are optional, but I think would provide a bit more clear direction to the search engines about which page to present for which locales.
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
-
International SEO And Duplicate Content Within The Same Language
Hello, Currently, we have a .com English website serving an international clientele. As is the case we do not currently target any countries in Google Search Console. However, the UK is an important market for us and we are seeing very low traffic (almost entirely US). We would like to increase visibility in the UK, but currently for English speakers only. My question is this - would geo-targeting a subfolder have a positive impact on visibility/rankings or would it create a duplicate content issue if both pieces of content are in English? My plan was: 1. Create a geo-targeted subfolder (website.com/uk/) that copies our website (we currently cannot create new unique content) 2. Go into GSC and geo-target the folder to the UK 3. Add the following to the /uk/ page to try to negate duplicate issues. Additionally, I can add a rel=canonical tag if suggested, I just worry as an already international site this will create competition between pages However, as we are currently only targeting a location and not the language at this very specific point, would adding a ccTLD be advised instead? The threat of duplicate content worries me less here as this is a topic Matt Cutts has addressed and said is not an issue. I prefer the subfolder method as to ccTLD's, because it allows for more scalability, as in the future I would like to target other countries and languages. Ultimately right now, the goal is to increase UK traffic. Outside of UK backlinks, would any of the above URL geo-targeting help drive traffic? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Google Search Console and User-declared canonical is actually Hreflang tag
Hey, We recently launched a US version of UK based ecommerce website on the us.example.com subdomain. Both websites are on Shopify so canonical tags are handled automatically and we have implemented Hreflang tags across both websites. Suddenly our rankings in the UK have dropped and after looking in search console for the UK site ive found that a lot of pages are now no longer indexed in Google because the User-declared canonical is the Hreflang tag for the US URL. Below is an example https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet - is the product page is the canonical tag rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-gb" /> - UK hreflang tag rel="alternate" href="https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-us" /> - US Hreflang tag then in Google search console the user-defined canonical is https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet but it should be https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet The UK website has been assigned to target the United Kingdom in Search Console and the US website has been assigned to target the United States. We also do not have access to robots.txt file unfortunately. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | PeterRubber0 -
Ecommerce filter views, URLs and the SEO implications
Hi, I'm dealing with an ecommerce client who sells furniture. Each category landing page has a menu on the left hand side that allows you filter by colour, material, brand etc. Take the www.example/double-beds page, as an example: if you select 'Wood' from the 'Material' filter, the URL changes to www.example/Category/Browse?PageNumber=&ViewAs=&ObjectEntityKey=1916&PageSize=15&SortBy=&filterOptions=47&filterOptions=47 and all the wooden double beds are displayed. As this new URL contains some of the same products/content as www.example.com/double-beds, where do we stand from an SEO/duplicate content point of view? Are we at risk of a duplicate content slap? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
High DA url rewrite to your url...would it increase the Ranking of a website?
Hi, my client use a recruiting management tool called njoyn.com. The url of his site look like: www.example.njoyn.com. Would it increase his ranking if I use this Url above that point to njoyn domain wich has a high DA, and rewrite it to his site www.example.com? If yes how? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
URL Structure
I'm going through the process of redesigning our website, and the URL structure was brought up. We currently have our URLs structured as domain.com/keyword. It seems that some people think setting your URLs up to look like: domain.com/directory/keyword makes more sense from a user's perspective, and from a search engine's perspective. With our directories labeled as services, solutions, clients - I see no value in adding directories as it dilutes the keyword and brings the keyword further away from the domain. Are there situations where adding a directory before the page in the URL makes sense? If anyone has data showing the difference between the two that'd be great! Thanks, Brian
Technical SEO | | PrasoonGoel0 -
URL Structure Question
We are building a job board website that will have a decent amount of "career resources" type content and want to make sure we set up our url structure correctly. After researching on Google and here I have an idea how to structure it but would like some insight if we are on the right track. We are using Wordpress for the content part of our website. We will have about 5 content categories (like resume-tips, job-interviews, job-search etc.) The two options we are considering; www.domain.com/career-resources/index.html As content start page www.domain.com/career-resources/resume-tips/index.html category start page www.domain.com/career-resources/resume-tips/top-5-resume-mistakes.html article name is the /career-resources/ folder really needed or can we go something like; www.domain.com/career-resources/index.html As content start page www.domain.com/resume-tips/index.html category start page www.domain.com/resume-tips/top-5-resume-mistakes.html article name Are we on the right track... and is one way better for SEO that the other? Thanks! Shaun
Technical SEO | | aactive0 -
URL removals
Hello there, I found out that some pages of the site have two different URL's pointing at the same page generating duplicate content, title and description. Is there a way to block one of them? cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Tagging Assets
As I am finding ways to integrate keyword diversity into my key landing pages, I want to start adding META information to content such as images and videos. 1. Any blog posts on best practices you can send me to? 2. Can I add META information to iFrames? Or do i have to rely on the tags added within Vimeo & You Tube? Thank you again
Technical SEO | | GladdySEO0