Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
-
Hi,
Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example:
https://www.example.com/es_ES/
https://www.example.com/fr_FR/
https://www.example.com/it_IT/
My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented:
My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example:
User-agent:*
Disallow: /es_ES/
Disallow: /fr_FR/
Disallow: /it_IT/
This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt
What are your thoughts?
Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently?
I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.
-
Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.
So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:
This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation
Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.
The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.
Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:
if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.
-
that's corect.
-
Yes. example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com
So, when referencing that version in hreflang will it look like this?
Is this correct?
-
So, every page of example.com/en-US/ redirects 301 to example.com/ ?
If that's the case, then there is no reason in having that folder (/en-US/), just when configuring Hreflang for en-US use the URL without that folder
-
What do you mean by "exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites"?
My https://www.example.com/en-US/ 301 redirects to https://www.example.com
Thoughts?
-
Yeap, those implementations are correct.
in order to avoid duplicate content between different language/countries websites, in each page that is present on each site, there should be their corresponding hreflang tag.
In your case:
And for a sample page: https://www.smarttechMKT.com/es-ES/gastonriera-espanolNOTE, in the case that site.com and site.com/en-us/ are exactly the same then there should not be 2 sites. Just the one without the folder and hreflang tag with en-US should point to that
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thank you for the response, Gaston! I really appreciate it.
So you are certain that my hreflang and canonical tags are implemented correctly? For example, my Spanish version (https://www.example.com/es_ES/
Is this implementation correct?
Also, will I have any duplicate content issues with these different language versions?
-
Hello there,
Watch out your question, there is a site there. If its your clients, edit it.
Canonical and hreflang seems OK.
Blocking other languages/countries is wrong. There you are allowing google to see ONLY the us version.For further reading, take a look at these articles:
Hreflang:
Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console
International checklist - Moz Blog
Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz Blog Canonicals:
SEO Best Practices for Canonical URLs + the Rel=Canonical Tag - Whiteboard Friday Consolidate duplicate URLs - Google Search Console HelpHope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
Hreflang alternate as single-hop 301 - is this actually a problem?
First, this is not a question about whether 301 redirects pass page rank. My question is that if your hreflang alternative page URL is a 301 redirect*, are there any downsides. In all cases with our situation, the 301 redirect is single-hop and working. Tools, such as SEMRush seem to flag this as a non-canonical hreflang error, but I'm not able to find any cases where Google has suggested a redirecting hreflang is a problem. I'd appreciate any information on this issue before we invest extra time on a large international site. *In Drupal, there are scenarios where it's all but impossible to avoid having a 301 redirect in your hreflang alternate URL without significant custom work.
International SEO | | scottclark0 -
Duplicate store (subdomain) not ranking
I have a store ( www.grocare.com ) and I made a duplicate store recently ( in.grocare.com ) for a different region. Both have different currencies and target different regions. I even targeted the new store ( in.grocare.com ) to that particular country in google search console. They both have different href lang tags to mark different regions too. Now its been a month since this has been done. But the new store is not ranking in the region. The old one is still ranking and I have to redirect the traffic from old to new based on IP.
International SEO | | grocare
I thought making a new store and targeting specifically would help with rankings. Am i doing something wrong here?0 -
Hreflang problem?
Hello, We do have a client with a site in multiple versions (one domain per country). French and Spanish versions work really fine, but the problem comes up with the .com and .co.uk versions. This is my hreflang piece of code: When I go to Google.co.uk and search the exact match domain keyword "how much cost an app", I only find the howmuchcostanapp.com domain (1st or 2nd page) instead of howmuchcostanapp.co.uk. The UK one is not appearing! This is very strange. I have spent a lot of time trying to solve this, but I don't know what else to do. Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and help!
International SEO | | Yeeply.com0 -
Backlinks issue
Hi guys So I have 3 top level domains - I'm seeing backlinks that point to each other. Is this something that I need to fix? I'm not too sure if this practice is ethical, but I'm not entirely sure how all the links are pointing towards each other and if this is something I will get pulled up for how do i go about fixing it? My 3 domains are as follows: zenory.com, zenory.com.au and zenory.co.nz I would appreciate some advice around this! Cheers
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Wordpress SEO/ Ecommerce , Site with Multiple Domains ( International ) & Canonical URLs
Hi I have an ecommerce site with an integrated wordpress instance. I want to have one wordpress site that outputs to 2 domains exactly the same content , but one will have canonical URL . NZ & Australia Sites. So: Would I use the rel="Alternate" hreflang="en-nz" . I want the same content to rank well for each country and not be penalised for duplicate content. Ideas?
International SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Proper use of HREF-LANG tag and Geotargeting.
I am working with a global company that has different country sites (these are distinguished via country subdomains - country.site.com). Upon looking at the Google Analytics data, I noticed that even though the different country geotargeting settings aren't set up correctly, we are reaching the right target market for each site. My hunch is because even though there is no geotargeting, the language for each country site is making the content relavant (this in combination with the subdomain). I have read through various resources here on MOZ, and noticed that the primary purpose of the href-lang tag is important if you have similar/identical pages that are targeted towards different countries/languages. If the pages are translations however, how important or impactful is it to set the geotargeting and href-lang tags for the other sites altogether?
International SEO | | marshseo0 -
Understanding the "Index Status" Data Inside Google Webmaster Tools
Currently there are total 2,787 Articles added to my Blog. The Index Status shows the following report under Index Status>Advance Total Indexed = 12,505 Blocked by robots = 8,659 And when I do search for site:techmaish.com in Google.com, it shows; About 12,200 results (0.15 seconds) Now my question. 1:- Is it normal Or there is something wrong? 2:- If there is something wrong then what is that? Thanks in advance. _ Attached is the screenshot of my GWT._ 7dk.png
International SEO | | techmaish0 -
Ranking issues for UK vs US spelling - advice please
Hi guys, I'm reaching out here for what may seem to be a very simple and obvious issue, but not something I can find a good answer for. We have a .com site hosted in Germany that serves our worldwide audience. The site is in English, but our business language is British (UK) English. This means that we rank very well for (e.g.) optimisation software but optimization software is nowhere to be found. The cause of this to me seems obvious; a robot reading those two phrases sees two distinct words. Nonetheless, having seen discussions of a similar nature around the use of plurals in keywords, it would seem to me that Google should have this sort of thing covered. Am I right or wrong here? If I'm wrong, then what are my options? I really don't want to have to make a copy of the entire site; apart from the additional effort involved in content upkeep I see this path fraught with duplicate content issues. Any help is very much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | StevenHowe0