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.
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 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 -
Should Hreflang x-default be on every page of every country for an International company?
UPDATED 4/29/2019 4:33 PM I had made to many copy and pastes. Product pages are corrected Upon researching the hreflang x-default tag, I am getting some muddy results for implementation on an international company site older results say just homepage or the country selector but…. My Question/Direction going forward for the International Site I am working on: I believe I can to put x-default all the pages of every country and point it to the default language page for areas that are not covered with our current sites. Is this correct? From my internet reading, the x-default on every page is not truly necessary for Google but it will be valid implemented. My current site setup example:
International SEO | | gravymatt-se
https://www.bluewidgets.com Redirects to https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as US/Global) Example Countries w/ code Site:- 4 countries/directories US/Global, France, Spain Would the code sample below be correct? https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ (functions as US/Global) US/Global Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ US/Global Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/whizzer-5001/ http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions for France) France Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/fr/fr/ France Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products- https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as Spain) Spain Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/ Spain Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 Thanks for the spot check Gravy0 -
Web Site Migration - Time to Google indexing
Soon we will do a website migration .com.br to .com/pt-br. Wi will do this migration when we have with lower traffic. Trying to follow Google Guidelines, applying the 301 redirect, sitemap etc... I would like to know, how long time the Google generally will use to transfering the relevance of .com.br to .com/pt-br/ using redirect 301?
International SEO | | mobic0 -
Alternate Hreflang Problem
We have two travel websites.
International SEO | | Izzet
One in English language for people living in the UK.
One in Turkish language for people living in Turkey. The major difference is:
English (UK) website shows 4+ nights accomodation prices because UK travellers never come for less than 4 nights.
Turkish website shows 1-night, 2-night, 3-night prices because Turkish travellers never stay for more than 3 nights. We are using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags properly on our two websites. Today, I am disappointed to see Google display the wrong result. When a user in Turkey searches a Turkish keyword on Google.com.tr;
Google is showing the English language website. When I click on Search Settings > Language;
I see that English is selected under this question:
"Which language should Google products use?" This is a big problem for us.
Many rich users in Turkey, who are more willing to buy our services, speak English fluently and they may choose to use Gmail in English. But we are losing business because these Turkish customers don't convert at all on the Enlish (UK) website because of the reason I explained above. 1) What can we do?
2) If we remove the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags now, will it hurt any of the websites?
We have seen an increase in Google rankings for the Turkish language website after using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags. Izzet0 -
Multilanguage duplicate content question
I have following situation; First site, in four languages
International SEO | | nans
Second site, in one language Let's say we have the following setup: www.domain1.be/nl (dutch)
www.domain1.be/fr (french)
www.domain1.be/en (english)
www.domain1.be/de (german) www.domain2.be/ (french only) Possible problem is the content on
www.domain1.be/fr
www.domain2.be
Content on domain2 is a copy of domain1/fr. So French content is duplicated. For domain1, the majority (80%) are Dutch speaking clients, domain2 is 100% French.
Both companies operate in same country, one in the north, the second one in the south. QUESTION; what about duplicate content?
Can we 'fix' that with using the canonical tag? Canonical on domain1 (fr pages), pointin to domain2? Or vice versa.
Domain1 is more important than domain2, but customers of domain2 should not be pointed to domain1. Anybody any advice?0 -
Is there any reason to get a massive decrease on indexed pages?
Hi, I'm helping on SEO for a big e-commerce in LatAm and one thing we've experienced during the last months is that our search traffic had reduced and the indexed pages had decreased in a terrible way. The site had over 2 Million indexed pages (which was way too much, since we believe that around 10k would be more than enough to hold the over 6K SKUs) but now this number has decreased to less than 3K in less than 2 months. I've also noticed that most of the results in which the site is still appearing are .pdf or .doc files but not actual content on the website. I've checked the following: Robots (there is no block, you can see that on the image as well) Webmaster Tools Penalties Duplicated content I don't know where else to look for. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance! cpLwX1X
International SEO | | mat-relevance0 -
Do we need to update our sitemaps each time our content changes?
Dear SEO experts! We have created sites maps to get our international sub-domains indexed, however we're unsure if we have to update our sitemaps each time our content changes on our many landing pages which are translated to 17 different languages? Obviously the goal is to make it dynamic so it updates itself. I hope you can help us with some advice. Thanks a lot! Allan
International SEO | | Todoist0 -
Looking for content writers for multi-language SEO
Hi All, I'm currently doing a lot of work for a UK client who has multiple sites outside the UK (all part of the same business). We're currently discussing the option of us handling all of his SEO for his German, French, Spanish and Italian sites too, but we only have access to one person in the office who can speak French and Spanish. They're currently booked up on other jobs that we can't really move them off, so I'm looking for options of outsourcing some of the content writing. My question is, does anyone know of any high quality content writing services that have writers available to write for the countries languages above? We're going to focus initially on their on-site strategy and building up their high quality content. At the moment, they don't have much relevant content on their website, so we're going to initially look at this. Moving forward, we'll be looking at their off-site strategy and trying to find areas to submit high quality articles, look at guest blogging and PR opportunities. Any tips anyone has on this side (in terms of outsourcing to native speakers) would be quite useful too! Many thanks,
International SEO | | PinpointDesigns
Lewis0