What’s the best way to handle multiple website languages in terms of metatags that should be used and pages sent on our sitemap?
-
Hey everyone,
Has anyone here worked with SEO + website translations?
- When should we use canonical or alternate tag if we want the user to find our page on the language he used on Google?
- Should we send all pages on all the different locales on the sitemap?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks!
-
Allan, the Google resource is the base.
However, remember always that:
-
Google suggests using always the rel="canonical", even if it's only self-referential.
-
The href in the hreflang must always indicate a canonical URL. If not, Google will consider it a mistake and won't consider the hreflang.
-
If you're targeting two different languages (i.e.: English and Spanish), the use of the hreflang is not strictly necessary, however using it is another signal you give to Google about how you want your urls target a specific audience based on language or language/country.
-
-
Thanks, Thomas!
I'll definitely have a look here and let you know if we got any other questions.
-
This is my go to resource. Really helps plot it all out visually.
https://hreflang.org/use-hreflang-canonical-together/
As for sitemaps, refer to this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
If after those articles you aren't 100% sure, i'll try and answer any specific questions point by point.
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 to avoid getting penalized for having same website in 2 languages
Hi, I have a price comparison website in English with .com domain. Now as we are expanding, we want to localize our website and target different markets in their local languages. The first market we are targetting is France. For that purpose we have a different domain name in French .fr domain The website however, will have the exact same content & mostly translated in French. My question is what is the best way to avoid getting penalized by Google for having duplicate content? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
For a sitemap.html page, does the URL slug have to be /sitemap?
Also, do you have to have anchors in your sitemap.html? or are naked URLs that link okay?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Links / Top Pages by Page Authority ==> pages shouldnt be there
I checked my site links and top pages by page authority. What i have found i dont understand, because the first 5-10 pages did not exist!! Should know that we launched a new site and rebuilt the static pages so there are a lot of new pages, and of course we deleted some old ones. I refreshed the sitemap.xml (these pages are not in there) and upload it in GWT. Why those old pages appear under the links menu at top pages by page authority?? How can i get rid off them? thx, Endre
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Neckermann0 -
URLs: Removing duplicate pages using anchor?
I've been working on removing duplicate content on our website. There are tons of pages created based on size but the content is the same. The solution was to create a page with 90% static content and 10% dynamic, that changed depending on the "size" Users can select the size from a dropdown box. So instead of 10 URLs, I now have one URL. Users can access a specific size by adding an anchor to the end of the URL (?f=suze1, ?f=size2) For e.g: Old URLs. www.example.com/product-alpha-size1 www.example.com/product-alpha-size2 www.example.com/product-alpha-size3 www.example.com/product-alpha-size4 www.example.com/product-alpha-size5 New URLs www.example.com/product-alpha-size1 www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size2 www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size3 www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size4 www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size5 Do search engines read the anchor or drop them? Will the rank juice be transfered to just www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Are links from pages in other languages ok?
Hey everyone, what are your thoughts on this? If a bunch of links from another language, say the site is in Canada and is in English but we have french links pointing to the site with english keywords...is that ok? Will that harm us? Opinions? Facts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page
Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!0 -
Can use of the id attribute to anchor t text down a page cause page duplication issues?
I am producing a long glossary of terms and want to make it easier to jump down to various terms. I am using the<a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p=""></a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">Does anyone know whether Google will pick this up as separate duplicate pages?</a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">If so any ideas on what I can do? Apart from not do it to start with? I am thinking 301s won't work as I want the URL to work. And rel=canonical won't work as there is no actual page code to add it to. Many thanks for your help Wendy</a>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
What's the best way to phase in a complete site redesign?
Our client is in the planning stages of a site redesign that includes moving platforms. The new site will be rolled out in different phases throughout a period of a year. They are planning to put the new site redesign on a subdomain (i.e. www2.website.com) during the roll out of the different phases while eventually switching the new site back over to the www domain once all the phases are complete. We’re afraid that having the new site on the www2 domain will hurt SEO. For example, if their first phase is rolling out a new system to customize a product design and this new design system is hosted on www2.website.com/customize, when a customer picks a product to customize they’ll be linked to www2.website.com/customize instead of the original www.website.com/customize. The old website will start to get phased out as more and more of the new website is completed and users will be directed to www2. Once the entire redesign is completed, the old platform can be removed and the new website moved back to the www subdomian. Is there a better way of rolling out a website redesign in phases and not have it hosted on a different subdomain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueAcorn0