Can the Alternate/hreflang tags harm SEO?
-
Hello,
Recently one of my regional websites, targeted for Denmark (xxxx.dk (TLD)), received a manual penalty from Google, specified as “pure spam”.
The reason for this (as I suspect) can be the fact that the Danish site’s content, is fully translated from English, on the main site (.com).
To fix that problem with Google, I want to use the “alternate/hreflang” tags on both sites
URL’s (the main and the regional), before submitting it for a second review on WMT.Following this, I would like to ask you few questions:
1. Is there any RISK in using alternate tags between two sites (a “healthy” site to the one that got the penalty), Can it harm the SEO of the main site (.com)?
2. Once done, Will it resolve my problem with Google? Will they remove the manual penalty?
3. Based on your experience, would you recommend me to rewrite all the content on the Danish site, instead of just translating it (the current status)?Would love to hear your opinion on those issues.
Thanks a lot!
-
Hello,
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604777?hl=en That would be your main guidelines. Now, here are my questions/suggestions. How did you translate that website? Is it automatically generated through google translate? Have you done any other spammy stuff? Is your backlink profile clean?
According to Matt explainations in video above, it would have to be very good reason to mark your website as pure spam. So, if you just translated (properly) english website, then it shouldn't be the reason for taking manual action on your website. So, check everything else.
Now, as to your questions.
- I think that would depend on is your "healthy" website really healthy. Because if it's actually as spammy (at least in the eyes of google), then you'll basically tell google "Hey, look at my another spammy website". But, I believe, if english website is all good and has no spam attached to it, then it shouldn't be a problem.
- According to Matt, it will be pretty difficult to unmark your website and you'll have to spend a lot of time and effort on proving it. So, roll up your sleeves and get ready to work.
- If you're translating it, you're pretty much rewriting it. I used to work as a translator and there is no way to translate word to word, the proper way of translation is when you translate the idea/thought/intent, not words itself.
Hope this helps.
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
-
How can a site rank high without any visible SEO tactics?
Hi SEO specialists, I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but there is something bugging me for awhile now, so I thought let's give it a try. I work for several clients and one of them works in the Psychic business. Since a few months we see that site from Psychicvop.com is taking over all kinds of top rankings in Google. The strange thing is that I can't detect anything that I always learned which is basic material for SEO. There isn't much content and there link profile isn't really spectacular either. Does any of you have an idea what it is about this sites that makes them outrank every other site in the business?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LiveFootballTickets0 -
Adding hreflang tags - better on each page, or the site map?
Hello, I am wondering if there seems to be a preference for adding hreflang tags (from this article). My client just changed their site from gTLDs to ccTLDs, and a few sites have taken a pretty big traffic hit. One issue is definitely the amount of redirects to the page, but I am also going to work with the developer to add hreflang tags. My question is - is it better to add them to the header of each page, or the site map, or both, or something else? Any other thoughts are appreciated. Our Australia site, which was at least findable using Australia Google before this relaunch, is not showing up, even when you search the company name directly. Thanks!Lauryn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | john_marketade0 -
Domain.com/postname vs. Domain.com/blog/postname
I am wondering what is the best practice regarding blogs? I read that it would be best to structure a website like a pyramide instead of a flat panckage But I have seen many blogs where the post shows right after the domain name. Domain.com/postname instead of Domains/blog/postname My point is that if a website has many post then the structure will get very flat and this will maybe make your most optimized and important pages less important to google domain.com/page a) What do you think about this, which one of the two blog solutions do you prefer and why? b) in context to blog If for instance you had a keyword like Copenhagen property would you then consider renaming your blog to realetateagent.com/Copenhagen-property-news/post-name c) Would write a little intro like 200 words for the page 1 of your blog and add in some keywords.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
SEO Experts: Where did you start?
Hi all! I'm beginning to travel down the road of becoming an SEO expert! I've attended the latest few webinars on Moz, and have started watching the White Board Fridays. However I'm wondering, for the current SEO Experts, how did you get to where you are today? I.e. What books did you read? Did you pay for classes or just learn everything from Moz? Where is a good place to get an SEO Expert Certification/Is it necessary? How long did it take you to become an expert? (Stuff like that) I suppose I'm looking to make a list for myself, organizing what I should learn first, and then create a timeline moving forward. Thanks for your help Mozzers! - Briana B.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCWhelan13 -
Subdomains + SEO
Hi everyone, So a little background - my company launched a new website (http://www.everyaction.com). The homepage is currently hosted on an amazon s3 bucket while the blog and landing pages are hosted within Hubspot. My question is - is that going to end up hurting our SEO in the long run? I've seen a much slower uptick in search engine traffic than I'm used to seeing when launching new sites and I'm wondering if that's because people are sharing the blog.everyaction.com url on social (which then wouldn't benefit just everyaction.com?) Anyways, a little help on what I should be considering when it comes to subdomains would be very helpful. Thanks, Devon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EveryActionHQ0 -
How important is the HTML structure for on-page/on-site SEO?
To be more specific, say a page layout has Header, Body, Left Sidebar, Footer sections. Which layout from the following options is more SEO-friendly? Header > Body > Right Sidebar > Footer Body > Header > Right Sidebar > Footer Does it make a big difference to code HTML so that the the copy of the body appears in front of all other sections when spiders crawl a website? Is it worth taking extra steps to make this happen? I am asking this question because our site has a header navigation with a lot of dropdown menus. So I assume that this is "noise" for spiders as it pushes the main content of the page down. Please bear in mind that the question is more geared towards how search engine see the page rather than how it appears to the end user as layout can be controlled by CSS.This question also assumes that all other on-site SEO best practices are followed for both options.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saugar0 -
Using rel=alternate hreflang element on ccTLDs
We have multilingual websites with some content variations but 60% of the content on site remains the same. Is it still advisable to use:rel=alternate hreflang option on ccTLDs when ccTLDs are in itself strong signal for Google to display result in respective countries 1. example.com 2. example.co.uk 3. example.co.jp 4. example.de
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Title Attribute for H2 & h3 Tag SEO Question
Hi , We have an eCommerce Site and from looking at a competitor , they seem to be rank better than us even though our everything about our site is better . We hire the same products (are affiliated the same company) so the product list is the same. Both our category pages score A grade in Seomoz reports. So This is what I can deduce from the competitors category page I am trying to compete against. On the cement Mixer hire category page The competitor has put the Main Keyword "Cement mixer hire" in all the Title Attributes on their H2 and H3 tags as well as it being the main H1 tag. They have 5 product links in h3 tags all with the same title attribute (cement mixer hire) These links go through to product page. Am I missing a trick here ?..... I would have though using the title attribute so much for main keyword would be a bit spammy ?. I have copied them with the point 1 but I have not done mine h3 as yet. Just wondering that the SEO guru's thought ?. thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0