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
-
Rankings are different in Different Geographical are with in the same country
Hello , I observed my ranking are different in same country but different geographical areas.Is this nature is common or we missing something. How long will it take to come to the same rankings.
Technical SEO | | medhahostingpr0 -
Should I consolidate multiple domains to a single site with 301 redirects?
Our client wants all his sites to be re-designed and perhaps consolidated into one domain. What are the dangers of using 301s on all his already ranking and established domains to their new forward-slash location? If there are some good articles that describe this exact issue please post a link.
Technical SEO | | dsmdesign0 -
Duplicated content in moz report due to Magento urls in a multiple language store.
Hi guys, Moz crawl is reporting as duplicated content the following urls in our store: http://footdistrict.com and http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es The chain: ___store=footdistrict_es is added as you switch the language of the site. Both pages have the http://footdistrict.com" /> , but this was introduced some time after going live. I was wondering the best action to take considering the SEO side effects. For example: Permanent redirect from http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es to http://footdistrict.com. -> Problem: If I'm surfing through english version and I switch to spanish, apache will realize that http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es is going to be loaded and automatically it will redirect you to http:/footdistrict.com. So you will stay in spanish version for ever. Deleting the URLS with the store code from Google Web Admin tools. Problem: What about the juice? Adding those URL's to robots.txt. Problem: What about the juice? more options? Basically I'm trying to understand the best option to avoid these pages being indexed. Could you help here? Thanks a lot.
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
Multi language blog
Does google consider it to be spam by having multiple languages posts on a blog such as English, Arabic, spanish blog posts.
Technical SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Question about duplicate images used within a single site
I understand that using duplicate images across many websites was become an increasingly important duplicate content issue to be aware of. We have a couple dozen geotargeted landing pages on our site that are designed to promote our services to residents from various locations in our area. We've created 400+ word pieces of fresh, original content for each page, some of which talks about the specific region in some detail. However, we have a powerful list of top reasons to choose us that we'd like to use on each page as is, without rewriting them for each page. We'd like to simply present this bulleted list as an image file on each page to get around any duplicate written copy concerns. This image would not appear on any other websites but would appear on about two dozen landing pages for a single site. Is there anything to worry about this strategy from a duplicate content or duplicate image perspective in terms of SEO?
Technical SEO | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
What is the value of english links with foreign language anchor text for a foreign site?
I have a site in Spanish that is hosted in Spain with a .es TLD. I already have many Spanish-language links from websites in Spain, but I obviously want more and I'm finding I might need to look beyond typical Spanish sites. In talking to some of my link builders who work on my English/American sites, they are recommending that I build links on the normal article sites, blogs and web 2.0 sites that I normally build links on but that I make all the content English and insert the anchor text in Spanish. For example, if my site were about "weightloss", my keyword would be "perder peso" (in spanish). They are recommending that I have articles, reviews, etc written about weightloss in English with the anchor text "perder peso" worked into the English article. Most of the sites are English sites that are hosted in the US (article sites, web 2.0 properties, etc). My question is what is the value of these links? Does anybody have any experience with this?
Technical SEO | | jargomang0 -
What SEO considerations for multiple languages on a single page?
I am working on a language teaching site for Chinese speakers learning English. I consider myself above average when it comes to basic SEO issues, but all I know here is that Google doesn't like multiple languages on a single page. Without getting into too many details, both Chinese and English text will appear on the same page with links, tags, phonetic spellings, etc. I'm hoping someone here knows the science about using the lang="zh" xml:lang="zh" attributes within text and the effects on ranking for text within the declarations. And it'd be great if there was clarification on the link juice passed using the hreflang attribute for both internal and external links. Also, of course, any info on using both English and Chinese characters in the URL would be most helpful. A heads up on any other language specific SEO issues would also be much appreciated. My goal is to get the most out of both languages per page in terms of ranking.
Technical SEO | | kwoolf0 -
Should I 301 redirect my country specific sites, or use them as linking root domains?
I have loveelectronics.co.uk, but I also own 10 other country code specific domains. I am short on links (i'm actually still setting up the website) and wondered that until i have country specific content, should I 301 redirect these websites to the homepage of my main site, or could I use them as links which would mean I have more linking root domains? Sorry if this is a beginner question, but it would be good to know so I can sort this.
Technical SEO | | jcarter0