Question about region codes and Hreflang?
-
A client (see example above) has accidentally place region codes into the hreflang when the content is intended for all audiences that speak the language. So "fr-fr" should really just be "fr" since those that are "fr-be", "fr-ca", and "fr-ch" should all be getting to the French version of the website too. And there isn't a specific subdirectory for French speakers in Belgium or France or Switzerland, etc.
However, when looking at Google Analytics, these region codes don't seem to be stopping those from other regions from getting to the correct landing page. So a user from Belgium is still getting to https://www.example.com/fr/ depsite the "fr-fr" in the hreflang.
So question: is it worth adjusting the hreflang to be non-region specific (from
-
Hreflang tags are essential for indicating to search engines the language and geographical targeting of your web pages. They help search engines serve the most relevant version of your content to users based on their language and location preferences. (study abroad)
Region codes, in this context, are two-letter country codes that you can use in conjunction with hreflang tags to specify the target audience for a particular page. These codes follow the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard and are used to indicate the country or region to which your content is specifically tailored.
For example, if you have a web page with content in English but want to target users in the United States and the United Kingdom, you would use hreflang tags like this:
html
Copy code
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.example.com/us/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.example.com/uk/page" />
In this example:en-US specifies that the page is intended for English-speaking users in the United States.
en-GB specifies that the page is intended for English-speaking users in the United Kingdom.
Hreflang tags help search engines understand the intended audience for your content and improve the user experience by delivering the most relevant version of your page in search results.Remember to implement hreflang tags correctly and consistently across your international web pages to ensure that search engines accurately understand your targeting preferences and display the appropriate pages to users in different regions.
-
Hello
I am facing a Problem. My website DA is very Low. Someone can help me how I can increase my website DA. -
Thanks For The Great Guide.
-
I would adjust it personally. If for no other reason than, if someone analyses the site later on they should be able to get a good idea of your strategy. Even if you come back to the site later and re-crawl it. Leaving it as it is will inevitably cause strategic confusion down the line. Just set it to your original vision, keep all the signals under your control pointing in a single direction
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
-
Hreflang Tags & Canonicals Being Used
We have a site on which both hreflang tags and canonicals are being used. There are multiple languages, but for this I'll explain our problem using two. There are a ton of dupe page titles coming up in GSC, and we're not sure if we have an issue or not. First, the hreflang tags are implement properly. UK page pointing there, US page pointing there. Further down the page, there are canonical tags - except the UK canonical tag points to the UK page, and the US version points to the US page. I'm not sure if this will cause an issue in terms of SEO or indexing. Has anyone experienced this before or does anything have any insight into this? Thanks much! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Snaptech_Marketing0 -
Question about structuring @id schema tags
We are using JSON-LD to apply schema. My colleague had question about applying @id tags in the schema parent lists: While implementing schema, we've included @id as a parameter to both the "list" child of "ListItem" of a "BreadcrumbList" - on the same schema, we've added an @id parameter to mainContentOfPage and both @id parameters are set to the pages URL. Having this @id in both places is giving schema checker results that have the child elements of "mainContentOfPage" appearing under the "list" item. Questions: is this good or bad? Where should @id be used? What should @id be set to? Thanks for the insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
E-Commerce Panda Question
I'm torn. Many of our 'niche' ecommerce products rank well, however I'm concerned that duplicate content is negatively effecting our overall rankings via Panda Algo. Here is an example that can be found through quite a few products on the site. This sub-category page (http://www.ledsupply.com/buckblock-constant-current-led-drivers) in our 'led drivers' --> 'luxdrive drivers' section has three products that are virtually identical with much of the same content on each page, except for their 'output current' - sort of like a shirt selling in different size attributes: S, M, L and XL. I could realistically condense 44 product pages (similar to example above) down to 13 within this sub-category section alone (http://www.ledsupply.com/luxdrive-constant-current-led-drivers). Again, we sell many of these products and rank ok for them, but given the outline for how Panda works I believe this structure could be compromising our overall Panda 'quality score', consequently keeping our traffic from increasing. Has anyone had similar issues and found that its worth the risk to condense product pages by adding attributes? If so, do I make the new pages and just 301 all the old URLs or is there a better way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saultienut0 -
Google+ Page Question
Just started some work for a new client, I created a Google+ page and a connected YouTube page, then proceeded to claim a listing for them on google places for business which automatically created another Google+ page for the business listing. What do I do in this situation? Do I delete the YouTube page and Google+ page that I originally made and then recreate them using the Google+ page that was automatically created or do I just keep both pages going? If the latter is the case, do I use the same information to populate both pages and post the same content to both pages? That doesn't seem like it would be efficient or the right way to go about handling this but I could be wrong.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
Regional and Global Site
We have numerous versions of what is basically the same site, that targets different countries, such as United States, United Kingdom, South Africa. These websites use Tlds to designate the region, for example, co.uk, co.za I believe this is sufficient (with a little help from Google Webmastertools) to convince the search engines what site is for what region. My question is how do we tell the search engines to send traffic from other regions besides the above to our global site, which would have a .com TLD. For example, we don't have a Brazilian site, how do we drive traffic from Brazil to our global .com site? Many thanks, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
301 Re-Directs Puzzling Question on Page Returned in Search Results
On our website, www.BusinessBroker.net, we have 3 different versions of essentially the same page for each of our State Business for Sale Pages. Back in August, we did a test and did 301 redirects using 5 States. For a long while after doing the redirects, the pages fell out of Google search results - we used to get page 1 rankings. Just recently they started popping back up on Page 1. However, I noticed that the new page meta data is not what is being picked up -- here is the example. Keyword Searched for in Google -- "Maine Business for Sale" Our listing shows up on Page 1 -- # 8 Result URL returned is correct preferred version: - http://www.businessbroker.net/state/maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx However, the Page Title on this returned page is still the OLD page title - OLD TITLE -- maine Business for Sale Ads - maine Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker Not the title that is designated for this page - New Title - Maine Businesses for Sale - Buy or Sell a Business in ME | BusinessBroker.net Ditto for Meta Description. Why is this happening? Also have a problem with lower case showing up rather than upper case -- what's causing this? http://www.businessbroker.net/state/maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx versus -- http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Maine-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, MM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Question regarding **and <bold>tags</bold>**
I've read that these 2 tags both carry equal weight for seo purposes but in my opinion it looks a little spammy when you see keywords in bold type face scattered over your site. So will they still carry the same weight for seo if I applied a class to them that turned them back to normal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0 -
Google Product Feed Newbie Question
Hi, I don't know much of anything about Google Pruduct Feeds. Here is my starting point on thia: 1. Is this really free? We'd be doing it without Google checkout, just landing on our own pages with our own checkout. 2. Where do you upload the file? 3. What determines if you come up or not as a result? Any strategy or tactics involved? 4. We're the manufacturer of a product and late to the product feed game. The description that Google has used for our products is not ours or great. How do we change that product description that Google has for our products? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010