Hreflangs
-
Hey all,
We have two different websites, one is a Chinese version of the site with a different URL (.com.cn). The language is all Chinese however, I've noticed there's nohreflang tag on the html. Is this an issue? Presumably, if they type in our Chinese website URL then it should be fine, but if they just search our company name, will the lack of hreflang cause issues?
Cheers,
Rhys
-
Hi Rhys,
Yes, I'd say if there's any ambiguity at all, it's better to implement hreflang. Even if there's only a small chance of confusion. For example, assuming there's an English-speaking customer based in China, you probably want them to see your English-language site. Google might get it right without your guidance, but if there's no hreflang, they might send the user to the .com.cn site because it seems more geographically appropriate. (And yes, I know Google pulled out of China but they are preparing to re-open there in some form, so now is a good time to prepare).
Basically, yes: hreflang isn't very complicated—especially with just two languages—so do sit down and think about the most suitable site for each combination of language and location, and then write out your hreflang tags from there.
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
-
Google not detecting Hreflang
Hey everybody, We recently migrated our .co.uk to .com/en. Google for some reason is saying that the .com/en version has no hfrelang tags - even though they are clearly there and have had the same implementation as other language versions of the website. We also did a previous migration 6 months ago for the german version of our website and no hreflang problems there. We add our hreflang tags to our sitemap - which you can find here:
Technical SEO | | mooj
https://camaloon.com/en/web-sitemap.xml Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks 🙏0 -
General questions about implementing hreflang using XML sitemap
I created another thread regarding hreflang sitemaps. However, this one is more general and doesn't cover multiple sitemaps for different localizations so I think it's reasonable creating a new thread. We are trying to implement hreflang using XML sitemap. We have localized content for a few countries, but only 1/3 of the content is 'duplicate' localized content. How should this be presented in the sitemap? Can we have some urls with hreflang-tags and some without? Also, where should this be located? In the usual sitemap file at site.com/sitemap.xml or should we create a different sitemap site.com/hreflang.xml where we just paste all hreflang-info? And if it should be in /hreflang.xml - can we have the same URL twice (in both current sitemap and hreflang sitemap)?
Technical SEO | | Telsenome0 -
My translated pages are categorized as subpages of the originals / Importance of hreflang tags
Hi there We have a website that is originally in German, but has an English translation for all pages.
Technical SEO | | Jess_Smunch
I recently created a crawl map for it, which showed that all our translated pages are indexed as subpages of the German originals. I wonder if this is normal, or if it will have a negative impact on our SEO. If they are subpages, will Google still index and rank them with the same importance as the originals?
If not, what can I do to make them standalone pages and not subpages? Also, we have a few issues with hreflang tags that we cannot fix easily as our CMS does not give us a flexible option for editing our code. I wonder how much impact hreflang tags have on our ranking and if we can just disregards these issues? We use Hubspot as a CMS, if that matters. Thanks for your feedback!0 -
Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
Technical SEO | | lauralou82
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt We've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US. They have the following hreflang tags across all pages: We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously). Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all. Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location. Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?0 -
Hreflang for over 200 countries
Hi all, Working on implementing hreflangs on a site, but the client has presence in over 200 countries. Does it mean we have to implement over 200 Hrelfangs? Thanks, Asad
Technical SEO | | TTLO0 -
Hreflang tags with link to redirect loop
Hi guys, I'm having a bit of an issue on a client site that I'm hoping someone can help me with. Basically, the client has two domains, one serving users in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com), showing Euro prices, and the other serving users in Northern Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/) showing £ prices. The issue I'm having is that the URL for the Northern Ireland page has a 302 on it and goes through another 2/3 301 redirects until it resolves as http://www.americanholidays.com, however it does then show the £ prices. You can see the redirect chain here: http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&useragent=1&typeProtocol=11 The homepage is using the Hreflang tag, and pointing search engines to serve the http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ page to users using EN-GB as their language. The page is also using a self-referencing canonical, which I believe may negate the whole Hreflang tag anyway? My main question is - is the fact that the Hreflang for the gb_en page is pointing to a chain of redirects negatively affecting it? (I understand too many redirects are never good). Also, is the canonical negating the Hreflang? Any help/info would be great as I just can't get my head around it! Thanks guys Daniel
Technical SEO | | DanielKiely60 -
Canonical Tags on Parameter Pages With Hreflang
Hey Everyone: We are currently implementing hreflang tags on our site, and we have many parameter pages with hreflang tags; however, I am afraid these may be counted as duplicate content without canonical tags. example.com/utm_source=tpi href='http://example.com/de" hreflang="de" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/nl" hreflang="nl" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" rel="alternate" href='http://example.com/it" hreflang="it" rel="alternate" I have two questions 1. Do I need a canonical tag pointing to example.com ? 2. On the homepage without the parameter, should I add self referencing hreflang tags? (href="http://example.com/" hreflang="es" Thanks so much for your help! Kyle
Technical SEO | | TeespringMoz0 -
Hreflang and canonical for multi-language website
Hi all, We're about to have a new website in different languages and locations, which will replace the existing one. Lets say the domain name is example.com. the US version will be example.com/en-us/ and the UK version will be example.com/en-uk/. Some of the pages on both version share the same content. So in order to solve it, we're about to use hreflang on each page + a canonical tag which will always use the US address as canonical address. My question is - since we are using canonical tag along with hreflang, is there a possibility that a user who is searching with Google.co.uk will get the canonical US address instead of the UK address? Or maybe the search engine will know to display the right localized address since (UK) i've been using hreflang? It is really important for me to know, because i'm afraid we will lose the high rankings that we have right now on google.co.uk. Thanks in Advance
Technical SEO | | Operad-LTD0