Advanced 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.
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. On the parameter pages (which have hreflang tags like above) do we also need a canonical tag on example.com/utm_source_tpi pointing to example.com ?
2. On the homepage (page without the parameter), should I add a self referencing hreflang tag? (href="http://example.com/" hreflang="es")
Thanks so much for your help!
-K
-
Hi Kezzi:
If the the utm pages (which are duplicates of the original page) have self-referencing canonical tags, won't they still be duplicates of the original page?
For example, let's say we have:
example.com/ and example.com/utm_source=tpi
All these pages have hrelfang, but the pages with utm are duplicates of the original, so I would assume that we need to have example.com/utm_source=tpi have a canonical tag pointing to example.com/
In addition, example.com/nl/utm_source=tpi would have a canonical tag pointing to example.com/nl/
Thanks!
-
Hi!
First of all welcome to the community!
Regarding your question, I would implement a canonical which would self reference:
- on NL page for example example.com/nl/
- on DE page for example example.com/de/
- on the homepage example.com/
Regarding the hreflang implementation. You will always need to make a self reference in order to make it work. So for example on an inner page, called Sample you would have on all languages:
I hope this helps
Gr., Keszi
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 tags
Hey guys, Recently (approx 1 month ago) did a migration from the .co.uk version of our site to .com/en. We've been doing a migration every few months to get everything under our .com. Previous migrations haven't had any problems at all, and hreflang tags detected correctly. For this new UK migration (that was done 1 month ago) google is saying that it doesn't detect any hreflang tags. We place our hreflang tags in our sitemap and so far we haven't had any problems with it. Here's the sitemap: https://camaloon.com/en/web-sitemap.xml Any thoughts on what could be happening? I really appreciate your input and help 🙌
Technical SEO | | mooj0 -
XML sitemap and rel alternate hreflang requirements for Google Shopping
Our company implemented Google Shopping for our site for multiple countries, currencies and languages. Every combination of language and country is accessible via a url path and for all site pages, not just the pages with products for sale. I was not part of the project. We support 18 languages and 14 shop countries. When the project was finished we had a total of 240 language/country combinations listed in our rel alternate hreflang tags for every page and 240 language/country combinations in our XML sitemap for each page and canonicals are unique for every one of these page. My concern is with duplicate content. Also I can see odd language/country url combinations (like a country with a language spoken by a very low percentage of people in that country) are being crawled, indexed, and appearing in serps. This uses up my crawl budget for pages I don't care about. I don't this it is wise to disallow urls in robots.txt for that we are simultaneously listing in the XML sitemap. Is it true that these are requirements for Google Shopping to have XML sitemap and rel alternate hreflang for every language/country combination?
Technical SEO | | awilliams_kingston0 -
Hreflang usage for language & country x only language
Hi guys, I´m dealing with a website of a client where hreflang tags are implemented as follows: As you can see the hreflang tags reference language & countrycode as well as only the languagecode with the same URL (for french: website/fr/ihr-besuch/online-tickets" hreflang="fr-fr" as well as hreflang="fr" href="https://www.website/fr/ihr-besuch/online-tickets"). Is this a problem and should be corrected so that either language & countrycode is referenced or only languagecode? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Julisn0 -
HREFLANG: language and geography without general language
Some developers always implement the hreflang for German (which should be "de") as "de-de", so language German and country Germany. There is usually no other German version targeting the other German-speaking countries (mostly ch, at). So obviously the recommendation is to make it "de" and that's the end. But I kept wondering and not finding anything: IF there is a more specialised hreflang, will google take that if there is no default? Example: Search in: de-at (or de-ch) Search result has the following hreflang versions: de-de; x-default (==en), en => Will Google give the result for x-default or de-de?
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Hreflang tag implementation
Hi Mozzers, For an international client, we want to install hreflang tags for 3 different languages for their website in Belgium: dutch, french and english. The dutch version (nl-be) and the french version (fr-be) can perfectly be installed, but our developer has troubles implementing the english version (en-be). According to ISO 639-1 , "en-be" is apparently not supported. Unfortunately, we can't generalize the hreflang tags (), because our client has different websites in each country, so we need to specifically target Belgium here. Does anyone have a solution? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Hreflang tag implentation
Hi, We've had hreflang tags implemented on our site for a few weeks now, and while we are seeing some improvements for the regional subfolders I wanted to double check I had the tags implemented correctly (a couple of examples are below). However while the regional subfolder sites are now ranking instead of the US site for some keywords, some key search terms are still returning the US site. Could this be due to incorrect implementation for that specific page? Due to complications with using Magento we're implementing the tags in the site maps. Also magento appears to be inserting a rel canonical tag automatically for each page and self referencing e.g. On www.example.com/uk/security-cameras (one of the pages we're having issues with) the canonical tag is http://www.example.com/uk/security-cameras" />. Is this an issue? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks. <url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits</loc>
Technical SEO | | ahyde
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/uk/dvrs-kits/1080p</loc>
<lastmod>2014-07-23</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority></url>0 -
Custom hreflang tags in WP & using with Yoast
Hi My clients dev has added custom fields for adding hreflang tags to head of pages such as: "Rel Type", "The URL", and "Language Code" Am i right in thinking that until a different language/country version of the site is created these can remain empty or should they still be populated once added say with some sort of global reference or best left blank since will leave the head content global by default ? Also how important is it to add charset to the language code ? since seems optional ? Also this set up is on WP multi-site with Yoast and devs asked me the below: _One thing to note is that Yoast generates its own "canonical" tags - so if _
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
_you are going to use hreflang tags and canonical tags then you don't need to _
_add a canonical using the custom fields I have set up - Yoast has that _
sorted. _But if you are going down the route of NOT having any canonical tags - and _
_using a x-defult for the hreflang tags, I will need to try and suppress the _
_Yoast canonical tag so you can do this. Much depends on your approach and _
what you think is best. So how do i know if using canonicals or x-default, i take it best simplest to leverage Yoast and hence not add canonicals to custom fields ? Isnt x-default just for indicating language selectors/redirector not specific to 1 region? So long as havnt got those then good to proceed with Yoasts generated canonicals ? Cheers dan0 -
Need advanced SEO help!
Hi guys, This is my last attempt to work out what is up with this site before it goes to the big Flipper in the sky (and even then I doubt it will make much more than £1!) This site was a successful site, then one day Google decided it didnt like it, and I have not had much joy with it for nearly a year now. I must admit I tried to forget about it for a while, but it has always been a thorn in my side due to the fact it used to be a nice little earner. I have SEOmoz crawled it and I cant find any issues that would cause such a severe penalty, I removed many of the affiliate links, clocked the rest of the affiliate links and tried numurous other ideas, but now, as a last ditch attempt I am looking for some help! I tried to avoid the typical thin affiliate site by adding relevant content, but I have seen sites with much poorer design and content rank higher than this one. Any ideas welcome! Thanks in advance My site
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850