Adding Meta Languange tag to xhtml site - coding help needed
-
I've had my site dinged by Google and feel it's likely several quality issues and I'm hunting down these issues.
One of Bing's Webmaster SEO tools said my xhtml pages (which were built in 2007) are missing Meta Language and suggested adding tag in the or on the html tag.
Wanting to "not mess anything up" and validate correctly, I read in **W3C's site and it said: ** "Always add a lang attribute to the html tag to set the default language of your page. If this is XHTML 1.x you should also use the xml:lang attribute (with the same value). Do not use the meta element with http-equiv set to Content-Language."
My current html leads like:
QUESTION:
I'm confused on how to add the Meta Language to my website given my current coding as I"m not a coder.Can you suggest if I should add this content-language info, and if so, what is the best way to do so, considering valid w3c markup for my document type?
Thank you!!!
Michelle -
thank you!
-
Yeah, I don't think you'll go wrong with "en". Glad to help, hope that answers your question
-
Thanks again George. So, I guess "en" or "en-us" is ok. Most of our customers are in the US by far, but we also have a smaller percent in Australia, Canada and the UK. But they all speak English.
That being said, maybe "en" is best?
Michelle
-
At least with Google, I doubt it makes a difference unless there are multiple languages on a page. If you use Chrome you'll see it auto-detects the language and offers to translate. It may only rank the page in a specific country or locale though. If you're aiming at Spanish speakers in the UK, it may be a little different.
-
Hi Michelle, "ll-cc" stands for "language-countrycode". So in the case of English, you can use "en-us" for English United States or "en-gb" for British English. I don't believe case matters (I have seen "en-US" and "en-GB" used too).
For your question, yes you can use:
You could also use:
Either one will work fine :). Which language are you targeting?
Here is some more reading from w3.org that seems more up-to-date, though I think you would be fine using one of the above methods.
-
The Bing Webmaster Central article where they discuss how to set the language for your pages is here.
-
Hi George,
Thanks for your prompt reply - and I agree - I'm sure this isn't a big factor, but when finding reports saying things are "wrong" - I'm trying to fix them for overall improvement.I noticed w3c says: Always add a lang attribute to the html tag to set the default language of your page. If this is XHTML 1.x you should also use the xml:lang attribute (with the same value).
So, is it best practice to add it (xml:lang) to this tag you suggested (is applicable to my document)?
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">And is "en" preferred over "ll-cc"?
Thanks again,
Michelle -
This is likely what you are looking for, but I don't think this is causing you any SEO problems.
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
-
Site moved. Unable to index page : Noindex detected in robots meta tag?!
Hope someone can shed some light on this: We moved our smaller site (into the main site ( different domains) . The smaller site that was moved ( https://www.bluegreenrentals.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
Directory where the site was moved (https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals) Each page from the old site was 301 redirected to the appropriate page under .com/rentals. But we are seeing a significant drop in rankings and traffic., as I am unable to request a change of address in Google search console (a separate issue that I can elaborate on). Lots of (301 redirect) new destination pages are not indexed. When Inspected, I got a message : Indexing allowed? No: 'index' detected in 'robots' meta tagAll pages are set as Index/follow and there are no restrictions in robots.txtHere is an example URL :https://www.bluegreenvacations.com/rentals/resorts/colorado/innsbruck-aspen/Can someone take a look and share an opinion on this issue?Thank you!0 -
Is Canonical Tags a Good Option With 2 Similar Sites?
I have an existing ecommerce site, on a Yahoo platform. I have recently started a different site on the Magento platform with substantially/almost entirely the same products and categories. For various reasons, I won't be ready to do a 301 redirect to the new domain for about another 8 months. I have 4 questions: Is it a good idea to use canonical tags in the meantime? Is there a way to know if the is cannibalization between the sites? They rank for different keywords. Will I lose all traffic and rankings for the Yahoo site if I go the canonical route? If I remove the canonical tags at a later point, will the ranking and traffic of the Yahoo site come back? Thanks in advance for your advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_Hatanian0 -
Need help with Robots.txt
An eCommerce site built with Modx CMS. I found lots of auto generated duplicate page issue on that site. Now I need to disallow some pages from that category. Here is the actual product page url looks like
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nahid
product_listing.php?cat=6857 And here is the auto generated url structure
product_listing.php?cat=6857&cPath=dropship&size=19 Can any one suggest how to disallow this specific category through robots.txt. I am not so familiar with Modx and this kind of link structure. Your help will be appreciated. Thanks1 -
Is my site being penalized?
I've gone through all the points on https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 but the site only ranks for its brand name after months. The website is not ranking in the top 100 for any main keywords (2,3,4 word phrases), only for a handful of very long phrases (4+). All of the content is unique, all pages are indexed, the website is fast and doesn't contain any crawl errors and there are a couple of links pointing to it. There is a sitewide follow link in the footer pointing to another domain, its parent company and vice-versa. This is not done for any SEO reasons but the companies are related and also the products are supplementary of each other. Could this be an issue? Or is my site being penalized by something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Development site crawled
We just found out our password protected development site has been crawled. We are worried about duplicate content - what are the best steps to take to correct this beyond adding to robots.txt?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
This site got hit but why..?
I am currently looking at taking on a small project website which was recently hit but we are really at a loss as to why so I wanted to open this up to the floor and see if anyone else had some thoughts or theories to add. The site is Howtotradecommodities.co.uk and the site appeared to be hit by Penguin because sure enough it drops from several hundred visitors a day to less than 50. Nothing was changed about the website, and looking at the Analytics it bumbled along at a less than 50 visitors a day. On June 25th when Panda 3.8 hit, the site saw traffic increase to between 80-100 visitors a day and steadily increases almost to pre-penguin levels. On August 9th/10th, traffic drops off the face of the planet once again. This site has some amazing links http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/04/algorithmsdata-vs-analystsreports-fight/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesAgate
http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/using/help/business/researchingfinance/stockmarket/ That were earned entirely naturally/editorially. I know these aren't "get out of jail free cards" but the rest of the profile isn't that bad either. Normally you can look at a link profile and say "Yep, this link and that link are a bit questionable" but beyond some slightly off-topic guest blogging done a while back before I was looking to get involved in the project there really isn't anything all that fruity about the links in my opinion. I know that the site design needs some work but the content is of a high standard and it covers its topic (commodities) in a very comprehensive and authoritative way. In my opinion, (I'm not biased yet because it isn't my site) this site genuinely deserves to rank. As far as I know, this site has received no unnatural link warnings. I am hoping this is just a case of us having looked at this for too long and it will be a couple of obvious/glaring fixes to someone with a fresh pair of eyes. Does anyone have any insights into what the solution might be? [UPDATE] after responses from a few folks I decided to update the thread with progress I made on investigating the situation. After plugging the domain into Open Site Explorer I can see quite a few links that didn't show up in Link Research Tools (which is odd as I thought LRT was powered by mozscape but anyway... shows the need for multiple tools). It does seem like someone in the past has been a little trigger happy with building links to some of the inner pages.0 -
Help needed on Google Webmaster tools
Hi I notice that one of my oldest sites , even if I put hundred of backlinks (good or bad) google webmaster tools never index more like 20 per day. Why is this happening? They control it? I mean they dont let them all to get indexed and they take it slowly slowly? If I put just 20 per day is the ideal link building amount? Thnk you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
On-Site Optimization Tips for Job site?
I am working on a job site that only ranks well for the homepage with very low ranking internal pages. My job pages do not rank what so ever and are database driven and often times turn to 404 pages after the job has been filled. The job pages have to no content either. Anybody have any technical on-site recommendations for a job site I am working on especially regarding my internal pages? (Cross Country Allied.com)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0