Hreflang for multple countries but single language
-
I'm working on a site that has implemented hreflang.
The site is all in English but has slight differences and breaks down to separate domains, so
the hreflang implementation targets specific countries per domain.
This was tested using http://flang.dejanseo.com.au but Webmaster Tools has thrown up errors. For example,
**URLs for your site and alternative URLs in 'en_GB' that do not have return tags. **But every page refers back.Any ideas what's going wrong?
-
The only valid redirection is the one based on user browser, not IP, IMHO.
However, if you want to use that kind of redirection for the home page (not the others pages), then that redirection should be working the first time, so that users can eventually choose to go to another version of the site they prefer (i.e.: I live in Spain and I go to domain.eu. When I travel in the US, I still want to go to domain.eu, not always being pushed to use domain.com).
Moreover, doing that, you will let crawlers to discover also the others version even though they were redirected to the one corresponding to their IP the first time. In other words, Googlebot (Mountain View, USA, IP), the first time will go always to domain.com, but once there it will able to discover also domain.eu and domain.co.uk from the versions selector, and it won't be redirected again to domain.com.
Said all this, the fact is that you want to target a political area (EU) with domain.eu, the world with domain.com and the UK with domain.co.uk.
This desire to target three different kind of geographies complicates everything :-).
The only solution I see is:
-
Domain.com set up as "global" >> hreflang="en". All users using English will see it in the SERPs despite of their location but in these cases (see point 2 and 3);
-
Domain.eu set up as the site for the European countries >> hreflang="en-ES" - hreflang="en-IT" - hreflang="en-DE" and so on.
-
Domain.co.uk set up as the site for Great Britain >> hreflang="en-GB".
Doing this and implementing the hreflang in the canonical URLs of the sites and referencing only canonical URLs of the others sites (apart having the self-referral hreflang), then you should be safe.
However, remember that with those hreflang, people searching in another language than English will never (or almost never) see your sites but for brand name searches or very specific brand + product queries.
Therefore, I am still of the idea that having only English websites for targeting the world means missing a huge business opportunity.
-
-
Hi Michael,
The tool crawls with the user agent "Hreflang.org Testing Tool - Desktop version". It does not impersonate Googlebot. It does not follow 301 redirects because if you use Hreflang to point to another page, you should link to the canonical version of that page. A 301 redirect indicates an error.
My opinion is that forced, IP-based redirection is not a good idea because all URLs must be accessible from all locations. Google recently (about a year ago?) started crawling from other countries but you still want all URLs to be accessible from everywhere. The point of Hreflang is to indicate links across URLs; so hreflang makes IP-based redirection unnecessary.
If you really want to do IP-based redirection, do it on the x-default version of the page. And use the x-default version solely for redirection. For example, don't have your English version as the x-default and then redirect non-English users to other versions. If you do that, Germany-based crawlers won't ever be able to access your English URL.
-
Hi Nikhilesh,
as a matter of interest is your tool crawling as a google bot, rather than some IP? We have now set to deliver TLD depending on IP but the tool reports the following for the hreflangs not on the same domain
- Could not load this page. Server responded with HTTP Status code 301. Expected HTTP response code is 200 OK.
-
thanks. I'm taking a look.
-
I believe what's happening with your site is the same thing as what happened here on Google webmaster forums. JohnMu replied in that thread to say that because you have the same content on different sites (it might say en-US or en-GB but there is no detectable language customization for country). Google considers this duplicate content and starts ignoring some of your pages. And when some pages get ignored, the hreflang return tags from those pages go missing.
I blogged about this phenomenon in detail here.
Of course, it's also possible that your Hreflang markup has errors that the dejan seo tool did not detect. You can try the tool at hreflang.org to get a second opinion.
-
This is a bit difficult. All 3 domains are bringing in some good diverse country traffic as is, but Google has said it will now ignore hreflang until resolved.
So for example, .com brings in traffic and sales from Chile, Mexico and Bahamas. So if we removed the 'global' for .com are we not risking dropping the traffic for these locations. Or will Google ignore anyway and serve? There are too many countries getting traffic to implement each one as hreflang and remove the global en, it would be massive.
But having said that if the server was setting the TLD to be served depending on location it would then be adequate to just use the 'global' hreflang's to hreflang="en"? Is that right?
-
You should consider using either one subfolder hreflang or strongly considering wire going into these markets for instance Germany would be best for .de if you are just targeting a European country that speaks English for only English-speaking countries throughout the world you may be best off with A geotld
i agree with Gianluca.
-
If your .eu domain targets English in all European countries but UK (and you are targeting the USA with the .com), then you should not use the hreflang:
because that annotation says to Google to show the .eu domain to all the people using English independently from where they are, but in the UK ("show domain.co.uk") and USA ("show domain.com"). In other words, you .eu site would be visible to Canadian, Australians or even people in Greenland using English.
If that is also the meaning of the .eu domain, than that's fine, but if it is meant just for European countries, then better not having it.
Moreover, if the .eu is meant as "global", then it is useless to add all the hreflang like "en-it", "en-es" and so on, because the hreflang="en" would be enough.
However, I hope you are considering the .eu in English for targeting countries like Italy, Spain, France, Germany et al as temporary, because - let me tell you - you are not going to see lot of traffic from European not English speaking countries. Why? Because we don't search in English, neither we have our browser set up to use English as main language
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
-
International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help. We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us. Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page? So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different? Example: General page: www.example.com/estate-car US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon Hreflang tags: Would that be the correct implementation? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Robots.txt in subfolders and hreflang issues
A client recently rolled out their UK business to the US. They decided to deploy with 2 WordPress installations: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt
Technical SEO | | lauralou82
US site - https://www.clientname.com/us/ - robots.txt location: UK site - https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt We've had various issues with /us/ pages being indexed in Google UK, and /uk/ pages being indexed in Google US. They have the following hreflang tags across all pages: We changed the x-default page to .com 2 weeks ago (we've tried both /uk/ and /us/ previously). Search Console says there are no hreflang tags at all. Additionally, we have a robots.txt file on each site which has a link to the corresponding sitemap files, but when viewing the robots.txt tester on Search Console, each property shows the robots.txt file for https://www.clientname.com only, even though when you actually navigate to this URL (https://www.clientname.com/robots.txt) you’ll get redirected to either https://www.clientname.com/uk/robots.txt or https://www.clientname.com/us/robots.txt depending on your location. Any suggestions how we can remove UK listings from Google US and vice versa?0 -
International Config in a WP Multisite environment: GWT, Yoast, Hreflang, SiteMaps etc ?
Hi If setting up on a WP multisite environment using Yoast seo plugin how should you: 1) Geotarget in GWT - set up a profile for the different tlds OR the network.domain.com different subfolders ? 2) Set up hreflang sitemaps - can Yoast handle this or anything manual need to be done such as disabling Yoast and creating a bespoke site map with hreflang ? Would this plug in help: https://wordpress.org/plugins/language-selector-related/ 3) Any other ideas or recommendations for setting up geotrageting correctly using WP Multisite ? Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Language Selection Splash Page- Impact on SEO
Hi, Our site has a page for new visitors to select their language to view our website So if you type our brand adress (http://www.bdc.ca) you should be redirected to this "splash" page (http://www.bdc.ca/pages/splashpage.aspx). What is the SEO impact of doing this and is there a better way for users to choose their languages, SEO-wise (and UX wise) ? You'll also see that after the visitor select its language, he's redirected to the actual home page using a two 302 redirects ( one to bdc.ca/en/ and then another one to the actual home page). I am aware of this and I know this is really bad. Please share what you think would be the best way to manage this language selection in respect to SEO, but with respect to UX too. Thanks ! Jean-François Monfette
Technical SEO | | jfmonfette0 -
Prestashop, language and 301
Hello, A question about Prestashop: I noticed that there are some Prestashop websites, with only one language, that work with a redirection from the main domain (for exemple, www.domain-name.com) with a 301 redirection to the main language url (for example, www.domain-name.com/fr ) Here is an example: http://prestaplayers.com/fr/ Assuming that French is the only language on that website, and knowing that links are generally made to www.domain-name.com (and not to www.domain-name.com/fr) I assume that some netlinking juice is lost for no reason, due to the 301 redirect ? In this case, and if the website exists for some years, what should be done ? Change all the urls because of that problem ? Or maybe change the stronger links to make them point to the real address (www.domain-name.com/fr) ? Thank you in advance for yout help dans suggestions !
Technical SEO | | Spleen0 -
Duplicate content on the one domain (related to country targetting)
Hi - We have a client who has a TLD that they wish to target several markets using .com/au .com/us .com/sg Each will use duplicate content with slight variations to cater for the local market (spelling, industry jargon). They seem reluctant to register a TLD for each target market (which was our suggestion) and I am wondering what SEO penalties would apply for having a majority of duplicate content on the same domain – perhaps using subdomains would be better? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | E2E0 -
301 Redirect for homepage with language code
In my multilingual Magento store, I want to redirect the hompage URL with an added language code to the base URL. For example, I want to redirect http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to http://www.mysite.com/ which has the exact same content. Using a canonical URL will help with search engines, but I would just rather nip the problem in the butt by not showing http://www.mysite.com/tw/ to visitors in the first place. Problem is that I don't want (can't have) all /tw/ removed from URLs due to Magento limitations, so I just want to know how to redirect this single URL. Since rewrites are on, adding Redirect 301 /tw http://www.88kbbq.com would redirect all URLs with the /tw/ language code to ones without. Not an option. Hope folks can lend a hand here.
Technical SEO | | kwoolf0