Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
-
Hi,
I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this:
-
(cd = Congo, a completely random example)
-
etc...
Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Vince
-
-
Nope, not needed, unless you are changing the language.
Now, if you wanted to do one big site and then offer certain pages that are the same except for "translation" - and it's a local dialect translation, then yes, HREFLANG would be used in that situation.
So you could use HREFLANG rather than a canonical between the kinda duplicated pages if they are changed only in dialect translation. But since there is different content per country, you would still need that geo-targeted section for the content that is different.
domain.com/congo/about-congo-office (I don't know the country code for Congo) - No hreflang, will be geo-targeted with the subfolder.
domain.com/congo/similar-product-page - If just translated to the local Congo English dialect, use HREFLANG with all similarly "translated" pages. If not changed at all, use canonical to the original page. If changed overall to target the Congo market, no canonical or HREFLANG needed.
-
For option 2, or 1 for that matter, would you use hreflang to do any of the targeting or just geotarget with WMT?
-
Hmmm, I am thinking there are two possible solutions.
1. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), but use canonical for the pages that are duplicated, the pages that are the same across all countries.
Also use javascript to detect a new user's location (don't auto redirect though, ask) to get them to the "right" version of the page, if they come into the non-country focused general page.2. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), and spend the resources to change the content on each page just enough to target that country. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to target that group.
Option 2 is the most time and resource intensive. Option 1 can be messed up quickly if the technical implementation isn't done right.
I know that's not a clean answer but international never is. There are always so many moving parts.
-
Yes. Beneficial information would be local events, customer stories/wins, press releases, local sales contact information, local partners, etc
-
This is tough. Let me ask you one question: For a potential customer in South Africa, is there any different information they need to see than someone in the Congo, or somewhere else in the world that speaks English? If yes, what kind of different information would they need to see?
-
We choose to target our sites based on where the regional/country offices are located. So in the example of South Africa our main African office is located in South Africa so the site content (events, forms, news) is based primarily on South Africa. That being said much of the content is duplicated from our main corporate English site. Our South African site mainly targets South Africa but could potentially go after any English speaking African country. Since the ZA site is primarily targeting a country with a duplicated language, is your recommendation to only geo-target via webmaster tools and not utilize hreflang? Most of our regions/countries do their best to translate the language on their sites but many follow the same tactic as my South African example, some content is local but most is a duplicate of our Corporate English site. What is the best tactic to not have duplicate content and to get the right sites ranking in the correct local version of Google?
-
Excellent answer Kate!
-
This is one of the instances that made me change the way I see the HREFLANG tag. So many people disagree but hear me out.
The HREFLANG tag is only for language differentiation. There are language and country codes because, as you point out, there are many countries that speak the same language and some have some major dialect changes. The biggest example being UK and US English. Therefore, if you have a site developed in US English that you want to "translate" to UK English, but not change the content of the site other than that, you would use HREFLANG tags to note the difference in the pages to Google. Since you changed nothing else (no currency changes, no legal changes, no product set changes), there is no reason for country targeting. You are just translating the same content ... aka changing a few words.
Now, let's say that you are operating a site that has a geo-targeted section to South Africa. Depending on the setup, you might not need HREFLANG tags at all. If you are changing the content other than through translation to target South Africa, that is geo-targeting. Targeting the country.
You can do both geo-target AND change language settings. For instance, if you are a Canadian company that legally has to have all of it's content in Canadian French (fr-ca) and Canadian English (en-ca), you would use HREFLANG between those two. But then you decide to move into the US. You might create a subfolder, subdomain, or ccTLD specific to the US market since you can't offer all of your products or services over there due to regulations. You would geo-target the new section/site to the United States, but not use HREFLANG since the content is targeted at a different country. You would want to make sure the content changed enough and the Canadian English pages might rank for a while but over time the US site/section would get stronger.
I hope that all makes sense.
In your instance where you have geo-targeted, I assume that is for a reason. However, because you have geo-targeted that section to South Africa, you cannot geo-target it to the Congo as well. You would either need to great a section for the Congo and geo-target that, or, if geo-targeting isn't really needed, use one big site and country specific translations. Only do this if your content is the same across the board and you are changing some of the wording to local dialects.
If you want to know more, check out my international search tool that might help you find what structure you should have: http://www.katemorris.com/issg/
-
What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries?
the only way to target everyone Speaking the language on the one URL is telling Google Webmaster tools not to specify a location or geo-target.
I do not know if that is the best method for you but if you just want to target English with one subfolder and have multiple countries you would take that away if you geo-targeted it to a country.
May be the best ways to handle it is multiple subfolders I wish I had a better answer for you but if you want to use one sub folder it would be to not target and to use an IP address from a server inside the country you wish to target the most.
e.g
All you have to do is list the alternative version of the pages and have the x default at the bottom. For example, this is what you would do for the English Canadian version:
Specific regions in countries can be done the same way you would do something in Canada.
the other method would be to pick the countries with additional subfolders.
you can target the same language in multiple countries by not adding to the additional information
Canada for instance let's say you did not want to target French and you wanted to target the United States as well
with one subfolder it could not be done. If you set it up to something like this I know that's one subfolder and one domain
-
Why would I target the main domain to a country that I have a subfolder for? My question is based on targeting one site (that is already set up via a subfolder) with the same language to multiple countries. What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries? Is this possible?
It may help to understand that my site is set up with multiple subfolders that target countries or regions. Some sites are translated and have local content for a specific country or region and other sites are in English but have content specific to that local country or region. I am worried about the sites that are in English but should be targeted to a specific region or country.
-
the answer is yes you can
here are some more thorough resources
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
http://www.branded3.com/blogs/implementing-hreflang-tag/
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2232347/a-simple-guide-to-using-rel-alternate-hreflang-x
you can create the tags that this tool or create a site map using the tool below
http://www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/
http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php
you can validate everything with this as well
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/case-study-the-impact-of-hreflang-tag/
by the way the way you can validate with screaming Frog the same can be done with deep crawl on a larger level.
hope this helps,
Tom
-
you could target one language using this method
as long as you add a subfolder or a sub domain preferably a subfolder. You can keep adding entries.
Take a look at http://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
&
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation
Hope this helps,
Tom
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
-
Hreflang made simple
I have a client with a Shopify site. It is a clone of the 'main' website which is a .co.uk domain. Client wants to use .com.au for Australia and New Zealand. All are English language. How should we structure hreflang tags? Or is there a better way to target the .com.au website at Australia/New Zealand?
International SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Hreflang Alternate & Pagination
Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.
International SEO | | ABullis0 -
Trying To Use Parent Company's Content In Another Country
Hi, I'm hoping someone can help me out here but this is what I am dealing with: Say John Smith Companies sells Widgets across the United States. They have also formed a company called "Widgets of Canada" in an effort to sell their Blue Widgets only in Canada and I am in responsible for their website. Recently, John Smith Companies completely redesigned their website and it now has a really slick look and is loaded with great widgets content. I would like to take their site and re-purpose it for use in Canada. However, I am concerned about duplicate content. I would be converting all the widget specifications from imperial to metric units, changing the title and description elements and also using a much different folders/ paths. Is this enough to avoid any issues with similar page content? Is there anything I can do with hreflang? Thanks
International SEO | | DohenyDrones0 -
Website Domains, Geographical targeting and Duplicate Content
My colleagues in Holland have 2 websites. I've copied and pasted their question - my comments are at the bottom "www.ancoferwaldram.nl with NL, EN and FR language www.ancoferwaldram.com with only EN language The EN versions Google sees as “duplicate content” so we have to get rid of that. I think we better use 1 website: www.ancoferwaldram.com with NL, EN, FR and maybe other languages and deactivate www.ancoferwaldram.nl Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with only the NL language? Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with direct links to www.ancoferwaldram.com and no content?" The focus is to get the site to rank in Non-eu countries for export. So given the .nl has higher DA (though only about 15) would it be better to have seperate .fr, .be, .com sites for specific languages and geo targeting. Or would it be better to keep everything on the same site? If so which domain? i assume that the duplicate content can be resolved by stating which is the canonical version, once the domain strategy is resolved welcome any thoughts here. 🙂
International SEO | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Multilingual Site with 2 Separate domains and hand-translated
I have 2 separate domains: .com & .jp
International SEO | | khi5
I am having a professional translator translate the English written material from .com. However, the .jp will have same pictures and videos that I have on the .com which means alt tags are in English and video titles are in English. I have some dynamic pages where I use Google Translate and those pages I place as "no index follow" to avoid duplicate issues and they are not very important pages for me any way. Question: since I am doing a proper translating - no machines involved - can I leave pages as is or should I include any format of these: ISO language codes
2) www.example/com/” /> Even though hand translated, the translation will probably be 85% similar to that if I used Google Translate. Will that potentially be seen as duplicate content or not at all since I have not used the Google Translate tool? I wonder from which angle Google analyses this. Thank you,0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
Google UK picking up USA Site
I have a site with two subfolders one is .../uk and one is .../us Part of the content on the two sites is the same and part is unique. The US site's language is set to en and the UK site's language is set to en_gb. I have setup geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The problem is that the home page is a GEO-IP redirect and it seems to be picking up information from the US site even on google uk. I'm not concerned too much about getting the uk site crawled as we submit a sitemap for that anyway. But my concern is that if I setup the geo-ip redirect as a 301 will my UK site loose all of it's ranking? Also am I likely to be penalised for duplicate content?
International SEO | | matthewdolman0 -
Same language many countries
Hello, I live in Belgium and in this country you've 3 languages : french, dutch and german. I've customers from many countries : France, Nederlands,... and for my website in ".be" (we'll say www.mysite.be for example) I've choosen the french language. My question is can I've the same content on my site : www.mysite.be and www.mysite.fr without duplicate content or should I forgot using www.mysite.fr to avoid the D.C. problem? And with my site : www.mysite.be should I've more difficult to rank in France for example? Thank you for your answer, Jonathan
International SEO | | JonathanLeplang0