Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
HREFLANG setup for Europe (in English) + .eu domain
-
We have been struggling to find answers since we launched our European website.
We have the following structure:
WEBSITE HUB
https://ecosmartfire.comThis works as a hub for our users. We show the url printed in our marketing materials. When someone lands in this URL, we check if we have a local store in the user's location and prompt the user to go to the right destination.
The default hreflang is:
LOCAL VERSIONS
https://ecosmartfire.com/us/en/ (United States)
https://ecosmartfire.com.au (Australia)
https://ecosmartfire.eu (Europe)
https://ecosmartfire.fr (France)We have no problems with United States, Australia and France.
The hreflang tags look like this:
EUROPE
https://ecosmartfire.euWe have two problems in Europe:
1. Language: the European store is available just in English
2. No hreflang: Europe doesn't have a hreflang that covers all the countries so we had to create lots of hrelangs pointing to the same location.The hreflang tags look like this:
... and the list goes on.
Do you think this is the right approach? Or should I just remove these European hreflang tags from the website code?
Thanks,
-
We used this same approach (except we are not using TLD, but instead are using directory paths for the regions). We have storefronts in US, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, and EU. The hreflang tags are working very well for all the storefronts except EU.
In these other regions, for all of our key tracked search terms, our ranking page is one within the right region for, when checked by the Moz Rank Tracker using the corresponding Google search engine. And, none of the pages from these other regions are ranking in a Google US search. So far so good.
But, for Europe, only our US pages are ranking when I check with any of the EU country Google engines. And, The EU home page is ranking for some searches in the US, including right now it is showing as one of our organic sitelinks for our brand name search.
We also geo-targeted all of our properties except for two, on Google Search Console. Originally. That would be EU (because Google doesn't allow to target for EU, only for specific countries) and our US site (because we use our www domain in US with no directory path, and in Google Search Console if we geo-target that, it applies to all of our regional directory paths).
So, we changed our geo targeting recently, and targeted our EU property to Germany. We chose that because Germany is our largest market in EU. But this hasn't helped either.
Basically, all the available tools we know of (hreflang tags, GSC geo-targeting) seem to fail at targeting EU. It is a shame, because many brands have an EU site (rather than individual sites for each country). But we have not yet found an approach which works well.
-
Hi, this is something i'm looking to apply in the near future too - i was wondering whether you'd seen any positive/negative implications from using the above hreflang structure?
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
-
Sub Domain Usage
I see that the gap uses gap.com, oldnavy.gap.com and bananarepublic.gap.com. Wouldn't a better approach for SEO to have oldnavy.com, bananarepublic.com and gap.com all separate? Is there any benefit to using the approach of store1.parentcompany.com, store2.parentcompany.com etc? What are the pros and cons to each?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 7, 2017, 1:20 AM | kcb81780 -
Ranking 2 pages on the same domain in the same SERP
I thought it was generally said that Google will favour 1 page per domain for a particular SERP, but I have seen examples where that is not the case (i.e. Same domain is ranking 2 different pages on the 1st page of the SERPs...) Are there any "tricks" to taking up 2 first page SERP positions, or am I mistaken that this doesn't always happen?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 9, 2016, 5:46 AM | Ullamalm0 -
The correct hreflang for the GB
Hi does anyone know the correct hreflang for the UK Google webmaster error: International Targeting | Language > 'en-GB' - no return tags (sitemaps)Sitemap provided URLs and alternate URLs in 'en-GB' that do not have return tags.Thanks you all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 2, 2016, 8:52 AM | Taiger0 -
Reverting back to old domain name.
I've recently been asked by a client if I can foresee any issues with reverting back to their original domain name. With the original domain name they had a pretty decent DA for their sector which they have now lost. Although I do appreciate that over time this might come back, the CEO is very keen to switch back to the old domain. They do currently have 301 redirects from the old domain to the new and have implemented rel canonical. As yet they have not notified Google of the change of address using Webmaster Tools. Can anyone forsee any issues with returning back to the old domain name? They have only been using the new domain name for a couple of months which currently has a DA for 1.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 2, 2015, 5:19 PM | Macrofireball0 -
How to setup multiple pages in Google Search?
How to setup multiple pages in Google Search? I have seen sites that are arranged in google like : Website in Google
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 24, 2015, 12:50 PM | Hall.Michael
About us. Contact us
Services. Etc.. Kindly review screenshot. Is this can achieved by Yoast Plugin? X9vMMTw.png0 -
Should I redirect my Google Update Effected Domain to brand new Domain?
Hey Moz experts, I had a domain which was really doing better but after the Humming Bird update my traffic was decreased up to 90%. There are plenty of posts on my existing blog, Now what should I do? I mean should I redirect it to a brand new domain or Copy all the posts to a brand new domain and delete my existing domain? Note that the Old domain has PR1, DA 19 and PA 30.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 16, 2014, 3:18 PM | imran20780 -
SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 12, 2012, 7:06 PM | knielsen1 -
Domain expiration and seo
My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 17, 2012, 7:04 PM | bronxpad0