Is this setup of Hreflang xml sitemap correct?

[SylviaH]

Hi,

I'm trying to setup hreflang for 2 domains.  One is purely a US site and the other domain has the language-country as subdomains.

For example:

http://www.websiteUSA.com (Targets English - USA)

https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA (Targets English - Canada)

https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA (Targets French - Canada)

https://www.websiteINT/es (Targets Spanish)

..and so on and so forth for about 12 of these international URLs.

I created an XML sitemap that looks something like this:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><url><loc>http://www.websiteUSA.com</loc></url></urlset>

<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA</loc></url>

<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA</loc></url>

Question 1:  Is this correct?  In my actual file, I have all the countries listed and self-referencing.

Question 2:  I'm hosting this file at https://www.websiteINT.com/hreflang.xml AND at http://www.websiteUSA.com/hreflang.xml.  Is this correct?

Question 3:  Will this help the SERPs direct english speakers from the US to http://www.websiteUSA.com while show SERPs for say English Speakers in Canada to https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA?

Question 4:  For some reason, when I put up the xml site, it only listed each URL once instead of the full XML file.  Should I have uploaded a text file instead?  It doesn't seem to render correctly.

Thank you!

[SylviaH]

Hi Gianluca, thanks for chiming in!

I will look into getting this setup.  Should this solve our issue?  It seems that currently, the hreflang setup for just the home page isn't working.  Google is not showing the US site in Google US or showing the appropriate international site for Google in that specific country.

Any other tips?  Hreflang setup for HTML will have to be applied for all pages, for all country-language sites, correct?  Where does the canonical point to?

Lastly, if all of this is setup, do I remove country geo-targeting in Search Console?

Thanks!

[gfiorelli1]

I personally prefer hreflang set up in HTML code, especially because is much easier to verify and correct than when it is implemented in a sitemap file.

[Mobilio]

That's correct.

Long story - there is hreflang in HTML head and in xml sitemap. What's the difference? In HTML you can use same-site or cross-site links (between domains), in XML they are only in same domain. So in XML sitemap you can't use cross-site links (between different domains).

Also in SearchConsole you can set "international targeting" (SearchConsole -> Search Traffic -> International Targeting -> Country) for different sites.

I know that hreflang is little bit complicated but once you setup your first site correct then on next sites will be much faster.

[SylviaH]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply!

What you're saying is that we cannot reference different domains in the hreflang xml sitemap, is that correct?  How do I then, make sure that the english version of the International Site doesn't show up for English Speakers in the US?  Are you saying that for the US site, I only need basically one hreflang tag and no references to any other URLs?

<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>

Here's the actual XML sitemaps that don't seem to be working according to the tested sitemap in Search Console.  You can see the plain text there unless you view source code (as mentioned in Question 4).

• For the USA Site:  http://www.shopcompex.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
• For the International Sites:  https://www.compexstore.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml

Do I need to just remove the USA domain from the International sitemap and all international domains from the USA sitemap?

I am getting an error in Search Console for both:

| This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location. |

Both referencing the different domains.

[Mobilio]

1. Look perfect. But i'm not sure that you can index in site X pages about site Y even in hreflang. You need to make test on some site. Please note - there is cross site canonical tag and this is ok. There is cross site alternate hreflang and this is ok. But i don't know about sitemap with links to other sites even in hreflang. You need to verify this in SearchConsole - upload sitemap and see for some warnings or errors there. Also don't forget that setup hreflang in HTML code too -> https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16 https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights

2. Answer of this dependent from "validation" of previous question - can you setup sitemap of site X with links to site Y. IMHO you can't. So you must put sitemap about int.com to int.com site and usa.com on same site. Like your example and this is for usa.com site:
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>

3. Yes, should be.
"Hreflang tags may not help you increase traffic; instead, the goal of using them is to serve the right content to the right users. They help search engines swap the correct version of the page into the SERP based on a user's location and language preferences. For information on how geotargeting can help with rankings, learn about ccTLDs."
https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

4. Can you show me this? Because your sitemap may miss XSL for showing proper. Or you may return different HTTP content type.