Most of us will remember the days in SEO where geotargeting was nearly impossible, and we all crawled to the shining example of Apple.com as our means of showcasing what the correct search display behaviour should be. Well, most of us weren't Apple, and it was extremely difficult to determine how to structure your site to make it work for international search. Hreflang has been a blessing to the SEO industry, even though it's had a bit of a troubled past.
There's been much confusion as to how hreflang annotations should work, what is the correct display behaviour, and if the implementation requires additional configuration such as the canonical tag or WMT targeting.
This isn't a beginner- or even intermediate-level post, so if you don't have a solid feel for hreflang already, I'd recommend reading through Google's documentation before diving in.
In today's post we're going to cover the following:
- How to check international SERPs the right way
- What should hreflang do and not do
- Examples of hreflang behaviour
- Important tools for the serious international SEO
- Tips from my many screw-ups, and successes
Section 1: How to check international SERPs the right way
I've said this once, and I'll say it again: Know your Google search parameters better than your mother. Half the time we think something isn't working, we don't actually know how to check. Shy of having an IP in every country from which you want to check Google results, here is the next best thing:
For example, if want to mimic a Spanish user in the US:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=es&gl=us&pws=0&q=seo
Or if I want to impersonate an Australian user:
https://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=au&pws=0&q=seo
If you want a full list of language/country codes that Google uses, please visit the Google CCTLDs language and reference sheet. If you want the Google docs version go here, or if you want a tool to do this for you, check out Isearchfrom.
Section 2: What should hreflang do and not do
hreflang will not:
- Replace geo-ranking factors: Just because you rank #1 in the US for "blue widgets" does not mean that your UK "blue widgets page" will rank #1 in the UK.
- Fix duplicate content issues: If you have duplicate copies of your pages targeting the same keywords, it does not mean that the right country version will rank because of hreflang. The same rules apply to general SEO; when there are exact or nearly exact duplicates, Google will choose which page to rank. Typically, we see the version with more authority ranking (authority can be determined loosely by #links, TBPR, DA, PA, etc.).
You might be wondering about duplicate content and Panda, which is a valid concern. I personally haven't seen or heard of any site with international duplicate content being affected by Panda updates. The sites I have analyzed always had some sort of international SEO configuration, however, whether it was WMT targeting or hreflang annotations.
Hreflang will:
- Help the right country/language version of your cross-annotated pages appear in the correct versions of *google.*
Section 3: Examples of hreflang behaviour
Case 1: CNN.com
Configuration:
<head> hreflang, 302 redirect on homepage, and subdomain configuration
Sample of hreflang annotations:
<link href="https://www.cnn.com" hreflang="en-us" rel="alternate" title="CNN" type="text/html"/>
<link href="https://mexico.cnn.com" hreflang="es" rel="alternate" title="CNN Mexico" type="text/html"/>
What should happen according to the targeting?
What actually happens?
Take a look at the US results for yourself.
Take a look at the US results for yourself.
Take a look at the Mexican results for yourself.
Let's try to explain this behaviour:
- Cnn.com actually 302's to edition.cnn.com; this is regular SEO behaviour that causes the origin page URL to display in search resuls and the content comes from the redirect.
- Mexico.cnn.com is not the right answer for "es" (Spanish language) IMO, because it's the Mexican version and should be annotated as "es-mx" ;)
- Since cnnespanol.cnn.com exists and seems to have worldwide news, I would use this as the "ES" version.
- Cross hreflang annotations are missing, so the whole thing isn't going to work anyways ......
Case 2: play.google.com
Configuration:
<head> hreflang, language/country variations and duplicate content
Sample of hreflang annotations:
*FYI - I've shortened this for simplicity
x-default - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....
en_GB - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....
en - href https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....
What should happen according to the targeting?
What actually happens?
Let's try to explain this behaviour:
- One thing you may not notice is that the EN, X default, and GB version are almost entirely duplicate (around 99%). Which one should the algorithm choose? This is a good example of hreflang not handling dupe content.
- The GB version doesn't display in UK search results, and the rankings are not the same (US ranking is higher than UK on average). The hreflang annotation is using the underscore rather than the standard hyphen (EN_GB versus EN-GB)
- They use a self-referencing canonical, which, contrary to some beliefs, has absolutely no effect on the targeting
Case 3: Musicradar.com
Configuration:
<head> hreflang, subdomain & cctld, country targeting and x-default
Sample of hreflang annotations:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://www.musicradar.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.musicradar.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://www.musicradar.com/us/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-fr" href="https://www.musicradar.com/fr/" />
What should happen according to the targeting?
Musicradar.com should appear in GB and all other queries other than EN-US and FR-FR where each respective subfolder should appear.
What actually happens?
See the Canadian results for yourself
See the American results for yourself
See the French results for yourself
Let's try to explain this behaviour:
- Perfect example of perfect implementation - you guys & gals working with Musicradar are pretty great. You get the honorary #likeaboss vote from me :)
- One thing to notice is that they double list the EN-GB page also as the X-default
- The English sitelink in the French results is pretty weird, but I think this is the perfect situation to escalate to Google as their implementation is correct as far as I can tell.
Case 4: Ridgid.com
Configuration:
XML sitemaps hreflang, subfolders, rel canonical and dupe content
Sample of hreflang annotations:
<loc>https://www.ridgid.com/</loc>
<xhtml:linkhreflang="en-US" href="https://www.ridgid.com/" rel="alternate"/>
<xhtml:link hreflang="en-CA" href="https://www.ridgid.com/ca/en" rel="alternate"/>
<xhtml:link hreflang="en-PH" href="https://www.ridgid.com/ph/en" rel="alternate" />
What should happen according to the targeting?
What actually happens?
Check out the Canadian results for yourself
Check out the Philippines results for yourself
Let's try to explain this behaviour:
- All 3 homepages are almost exactly identical, hence duplicate content
- The Canadian version contains <link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ridgid.com/" /> - that means it's being canonicalized to the main US version
- The Philippines version does not contain a canonical tag
- Google is choosing which is the right duplicate version to show, unless there is a canonical instruction
Section 4: Tools for the serious International SEO
Essentials:
- Reliable rank tracker that can localize: Advanced Web Ranking, Moz, etc...
- Crawler that can validate hreflang annotations in XML sitemaps or within <head>: The only tool on the market that can do this, and does it very well, is Deepcrawl.
Other nice-to-haves:
- Your own method of "gathering" international search results on scale. You should probably go with proxies.
- Your own method of parsing XML sitemaps and cross checking (even if you use something like Deepcrawl, you'll need to double check).
- Obvious, but worth a reminder: Google webmaster tools, Analytics, access to server logs so you can understand Google's crawl behaviour.
Section 5: Tips from many screw-ups and successes
- Use either the <head> implementation or XML sitemaps, not both. It can technically work, but trust me, you'll probably screw something up - just stick to one or the other.
- If you don't cross annotate, it won't work. Plain and simple, use Aleyda's tool to help you.
- Google says you should self-reference hreflang, but I also see it working without (check out en.softonic.com). If you want to play safe, self reference; we don't know what Google will change in the future.
- Try to eliminate the need for duplicate content, but if you must, it's okay to use canonical + hreflang as long as you know what you're doing. Check out this cool isolated test which is still relevant. Remember, mo' dupes, mo' problems.
- Hreflang needs time to work properly. At a bare minimum, Google needs to crawl both cross annotations for the switch to happen. Help yourself by pinging sitemaps, but be aware of at least a 2-day lag.
- You can double-annotate a URL when using X-default, in case you were afraid to. Don't worry, it's cool.
- Make sure you're actually having a problem before you go ranting on webmaster forums. Double check what you're seeing and ask other people to check as well. Check your Google parameters and personalized results!
- You can 302 your homepage when you're using a country redirect strategy. Yes, I know it's crazy, yes, a little bird told me and I throughly tested this and didn't see a loss. There's 2 sites I know of using this, so check them out: The Guardian & Red Bull.
Closing, burning question: You might be asking yourself, how the heck did he find so many examples? Or maybe not, but I'm going to tell you anyway.
My secret sauce is Nerdydata.com, and if you didn't know about this beautiful site, I hope that Nerdydata.com gives me a free t-shirt or something for telling you.
I find most SEOs who know about the tool are using it for useless stuff like meta tags (this is my own opinion), but what it really should be used for is reverse engineering things like hreflang and schema.org to find working examples. For example, a footprint you might use is hreflang="en-us" and you'll find a tonne of examples.
Here's a few to get you started:
| marketo.com | asos.com | 99designs.com | sistrix.com |
| mozilla.org | agoda.com | emirates.com | trivago.com |
| salesforce.com | techradar.com | symantec.com | rentalcars.com |
| softonic.com | aufeminin.com | alfemminile.com | moo.com |
| istockphoto.com | ea.com | freelotto.com | softonic.it |
| americanexpress.com | zara.com | xero.com | trustpilot.com |
| viadeo.com | marriott.com | gofeminin.de | here.com |
| hotels.com | enfemenino.com | ringcentral.com | mailjet.com |
That's it folks, hopefully you've learned a thing or two. Good luck in your international adventures and feel free to say hi on Twitter. :)
I'm having trouble configuring hreflang in my situation. There's 3 identical english versions of my website with the only difference being the currency. I will target 1:England with "en-GB". Then the other versions are 2:Europe and 3:The rest of the world. I only have the option to use "en" as a global indicator, there is no way to target Europe. How can I solve this? For the time beging I used "en" for Europe and "en-US" for the rest of the world, but that will prevent me from reaching a lot of countries outside of the USA with the world version. Any thoughts on this?
Hi David! This is a great post and surely will be referenced a lot here in the Q&A and all over.
In relation to hreflang + canonical, I think that one the most misunderstood messages by Google is that both are operating on a different level.
Returning to hreflang, I usually call it "sudoku", because it really it is so. Usually the examples are related to home pages and landings... but the real complication I see people are having is combining hreflang with pagination and faceted navigation. Not that it is really complicated to understand, but yes to implement - for instance - for small eCommerce sites that doesn't have the internal skills for handle hreflang and don't have tools that can help them on scale.
Finally - asking this because it could be an useful addendum to your post - may you tell us what you have seen re. the relation between Title tag, rel="canonical" cross domain and hreflang?
If we have two URLs (en-us and en-gb), with identical content and with the en-gb URL canonicalized to the en-us one, what I usually see is that Google show the en-gb URL in google.co.uk but with the Title taken from the <title> of the canonical en-us URL.
This is not a problem if the page is, for instance, an "about us" kind of page, but for products/categories people may think to craft different title/meta description because different are the targets.
So... apart trying to differentiate the two pages so to avoid the duplication issue, and also remembering what you have written in this same post that you hardly saw Panda affecting sites geo-targeting different countries via GWT, what about using hreflang in combination with self-referential rel="canonical", in order to maintain the original title and meta description? Would you suggest it? (this question confirms my "sudoku" theory).
hreflang also can be set as HTTP header. And this create more than one way to shoot you in foot.
Thanks, will look into this!
Ciao Gianluca ;)
Thank you for the compliment (and tweets), very much appreciated.
1) "If we have two URLs (en-us and en-gb), with identical content and with the en-gb URL canonicalized to the en-us one, what I usually see is that Google show the en-gb URL in google.co.uk but with the Title taken from the <title> of the canonical en-us URL."
Yep, you're exactly right. See the Ridgid.com/ca/en example for a live version of this that you can decontruct.
2) "apart trying to differentiate the two pages so to avoid the duplication issue, and also remembering what you have written in this same post that you hardly saw Panda affecting sites geo-targeting different countries via GWT, what about using hreflang in combination with self-referential rel="canonical", in order to maintain the original title and meta description? Would you suggest it? (this question confirms my "sudoku" theory)."
Self referencing canonical tags seem to work independently when used with hreflang, and they can be used without any issues. The main reason why I've used hreflang and specified a canonical in a language is to consolidate page authority, rather than actually worrying about Panda. It's also weird, but if you set canonicals up on a site (that aren't self referential), you might notice that Googlebot doesn't crawl them as often over time - which is good right? If they are dupes and they have been from the index, we can safely assume that page authority has been transferred and we're not expending crawl time on dupe pages. The crawl frequency on canonicals and noindex'es really varies from site to site so I can't say that this is the normal side effect of these suggestions/directives. Ideally, guard yourself against this dupe problem by not having dupes at all.
Great questions!
David, this is a great post on hreflang. Thanks
Very great article, I will definitely use this are a reference for when I'm talking to clients about GEO location fixes for their websites (to better aid their understanding). From my experience both hreflang and schema markup are area's which people don't fully understand how to implement properly. Keep up the great work, you're helping the community a lot! :-)
-Tyler
Hi David,
Thanks for a great overview over good and not-so-good practices in the field of international SEO. This post will surely help a lot of people to better understand the use and proper implementation of hreflang.
Being based in Switzerland, we are always faced with multilingual website setups and have been doing a lot work in setting up the proper geo-targeting for our international clients.
Not too long ago I wrote a short post about the implementation of hreflang in an international website setup, where the effect was very significant. You'll find the visual representation of the impact as well as my comments in our blog post: https://www.webrepublic.ch/blog/2013/international-... I'm sure this will be of interest for you and perhaps may serve as a reference to some people who might want to reinforce the importance of this tag when speaking to clients.
Looking forward to your next post on this topic!
Hey David,
Undoubtedly, it's one of the great post about the international SEO I've come across. Hats off to your effort.
By seeing the Music Radar example, I just want to know if the site XYZ.com is offering their services in Spain, Italy and US. They want the visitors to select their desired language from main page. Is this technically right from the SEO point of view? or they should use the Music Radar methodology.
By the way, thanks for the Aleyda's tool.
Cheers,
Thanks! This is all down to user experience and less about SEO, but I really dislike when websites choose a language based on your location Previously, 99designs.es (spanish version) had a bad UX IMO, but now they recognize that my language might be English even though they redirect me to their Spanish site. Unfortunately, they still have some issues to correct but you can reverse engineer starting here: https://www.google.com/search?q=info%3Aen.99design...
I'm going to answer your question by saying that you'd want to get the Spanish searchers to the Spanish page, etc.. That's technically the right answer for SEO but it depends on a bunch of different factors including the business itself.
Hi David,
nice article. A couple of comments.
---
1) In our pie chart the red section is bigger. :-)
2) It should be ES-MX, not MX-ES.
3) on musicradar on fr-fr, the english sitelink is not good, I agree. But it is not a hreflang variation, it is a subpage. So hreflang itself works as intended.
4) for ridgig, I see the /ph/en as the top results on the query from google.com.ph right now. Your conclusion ('the canonical instruction CA->US trumps the hreflang for PH) is not valid.
5) CNN does not work for es-us because 'mexico.cnn.com' does not link back.
Section 5:
- please definitely always self-reference.
- country-redirectors should always use 302 (NOT 301), but in terms of hreflang the country-redirector page should be included as the x-default.
---
Hi Christopher!
Fantastic to see you here, and I finally get the chance to thank you for all of your work on the hreflang annotation. Thanks ;)
1) Oh, well that's pretty good!
2) Silly typo on my part, I'll get that changed. Thanks for the catch
3) Is this something you guys are going to address, or is there something we can do if this happens?
4) That must have changed very recently, I've been monitoring that for at least 2 months. With very similar examples we were unable to get the correct display URL to fire at search time in the case of duplicate content (i.e. 95% or higher duplication of on page text). Maybe I'll just post examples in webmaster forum for you.
5) Agree, I mentioned this above and also in a reply. Thanks for confirming.
Other
Self reference: I agree. I still see plenty of sites that don't self reference and benefit from near perfect display, like softonic.com. But yes, if you say so, we'll make sure to self reference and tell others to do the same without question.
302 / country redirector - I had a little bit of "help" with this one, but it really should be mentioned in the International FAQ or in a blog post somewhere. Or maybe it is and I just couldn't find it?
3) well, in this specific case, for that sub-url, the hreflang is not consistent with the rel-canonical (trailing slash inconsistency).
Hi David, you had done a great analysis this time. Very well presentation to learn closely about how big brands are doing their job in the most effective manner. This is simply great post for everyone who wants to target multinational audience with single site.
Brilliant effort and love the NerdyData tool!
Agreed! Great tool.
Thanks David! - not sure how Softonic italian example fits in your MusicRadar case
Love the Nerdydata reverse look-up as well!
Good catch, thanks! It should have read: "Musicradar.com should appear in GB and all other queries other than EN-US and FR-FR where each respective subfolder should appear."
Fixed above.
Good catch, thank you!
Thanks for creating this, David.
We implemented hreflang in 2012 at SuperOffice across several country websites, including two English (COM/ UK) and two German (DE/ CH). We implemented hreflang in the <head> and self-referenced each page throughout the site.
We noticed an immediate boost on local search engine traffic. There's no reason why any international brand shouldn't use hreflang.
Cool :) Yeah, hreflang is going to become standard sooner or later and I'd also advise people to get on board rather than hang around. Even big brands with long standing CCTLDS have display issues on deep pages, the trouble is that we tend to only look at homepages and "think" everything is okay.
Just love this post and has been a nice reference for a while now.
Here's a question:
1) For the "perfect case scenario" number 3 of Musicradar.com where the x-default seems to appear as one of the sitelinks. Would this be a situation to demote the link using Search Console?
This one is more of a challenge for all of you:
2) How would you implement the hreflang tag on 3 different subdomains that want to target all English searches in the world with the following correlation: EAME countries to uk-version; Americas to us-version; Australia and Pacific to au-version.
I've been asked this (2) before and consider it to be so tricky. Google limits regions to countries. The best solution I can come up with is to x-default for example for the au-version and then create a tag en-XX where XX are all the countries in Europe for the uk-version page and the same for all the countries of Americas to the us-version page. Makes sense?
(the x-type tag I guess that should be implemented for the region with more countries for less lines of code)
Thanks.
Hello David,
Thank you for explaining hreflang in detail. If have one question If you can please answer I would be thankful.
I work for digital agency that has two offices in two countries i-e Dubai and Singapore. They have two websites for two regions. let say
https://www.abc.com
https://www.abc.com.sg
Both website are have same structure and but different content. Singapore website has the content targeted visitors Singapore only.
So my question is do i need to set hreflang in that case? If so how can I set hreflang on two domains?
Indeed, you can use hreflang for different domains without any problem. You can see this FAQ from Google Webmaster Tools to confirm this.
Hi David, thanks a lot for you article. Very Very helpful :)
I’ve got a question regarding SEO and Geotargeting
The following is my business scenario.
My business is based in Spain and its goal is to sell a product for both foreign students from all around the world that come to study here in Spain and to Spanish students as well.
Considering this scenario and the fact that for the resources I have at the moment I can just maintain two versions of the page I decided that the best option would be to establish two page versions – one in Spanish and one in English both with very different content.
NOTE – The main goal is to rank for different keywords according to the language. Therefore, the content will be different because I’ve conducted two types of keywords semantics strategy using Adwords Keyword Planner - One with Spain as country and Spanish as language, the other with Spain as country and English as language
Ideally the Spanish version would serve results for users searching in Spanish (Spanish, Mexican, Argentinian, Peruvian..) while the English version would serve either users searching in English being English their native tongue (American, British, Australian) or users with a nationality that doesn’t belong to a country where English is the official language but still (I suppose) search in English (Chinese, Brazilian, Swedish, Japanese…)
I thought that the best option would be to create two different and separated domains
www.example.es and www.example.com
Indicating in GWT that for both the domains the country is Spain.
And then I would use the following hreflang attribute to indicate the language.
For www.example.es
www.example.es" hreflang="es-es" />
www.example.es" hreflang="es-mx" />
www.example.es" hreflang="es-pe" />
And so on….
While For www.example.com
www.example.com" hreflang="en-us" />
www.example.com" hreflang="en-br" />
www.example.com" hreflang="en-se" />
And so on….
My question is, do you think this configuration is correct for my needs and goals. Do you have any suggestion? Can you see any pitfall?
Thanks for your help
If you don't find the answer you are looking for here, another great place to ask a question like this to our community in our Q&A Forum! https://moz.com/community/q
Hey David Sottimano,
That's really helpfull article, even its very simply explain the how it's work. But I think one points is missed, we would like to know where to add that snippet/code in the website?
Thanks
Ram
Well its great analysis of international SEO. I am Maths tutor in www.ibworldacademy.com , so i want to check mathematically how much it will be useful in calculation .
Hey, Can anyone suggest me... My Domain is www.XYZ.com no other languages and other sub domains! And I want to target my website internationally? I am from India. What hreflang tag should I Use???
Thanks for the great article, but I've a site which is has use URL structure strategy as sub-folder for multi-regional & multilingual targeting, such as https://example.com/uk/, to target users in uk, or https://example.com/ae_ar/ to target Arabic users in UAE what should I do to target specific regions or languages? suppose I've 50 country, should the header for all sub folders be the same as the following?
https://example.com/en-gb" hreflang="en-gb" />
https://example.com/ar-gb" hreflang="en-gb" />
https://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" />
https://example.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
etc,, to cover all countries & languages, right?
Should I use the same hreflang annotations for all sub-folders?
Great post! Thank you, David.
What is the answer for the above question?
Kind Regards,
Carl
Hey David,
It's really nice article with good example. But I've a very minor question regarding same.
Q.1: Are multiple domain are allowed for update HREFlang in single domain?
Lets take an example:
Website: https://www.advil.net.au/
I've checked the above domain in HREFlang validator and its found 2 different domain
1. https://www.advil.net.au/
2.https://www.advil.com
Error: No Return Tag
Now please advise how to solve this issue.
Thanks
Hi, do I add international language for local dentist business ? This is what i added in the head. It's a wordpress using wpml located in Canada. Default language french
<!— default website language —>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
<!— alternate language fr —>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com" hreflang=“fr" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com" hreflang=“fr-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com" hreflang=“fr-fr" />
<!— alternate language en —>
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com/en" hreflang=“en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com/en" hreflang=“en-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://website.com/en" hreflang=“en-us" />
Should I drop US and France since we want to focus locally ??
Hello David, Thanks a lot for this post! I have some questions about hreflang tags:
1. Imagine I have a site that targets English speakers and regions and other languages (not importants for this examples). Should be fine the following structure?
https://www.mysite.com/en" hreflang="x-default"/>
https://www.mysite.com/en" hreflang="en"/>
https://www.mysite.com/en" hreflang="en-gb"/>
https://www.mysite.com/au" hreflang="en-au"/>
https://www.mysite.com/hk" hreflang="en-hk"/>
https://www.mysite.com/ie" hreflang="en-ie"/>
https://www.mysite.com/in" hreflang="en-in"/>
As you can see, the the url https://www.mysite.com/en is listed 3 different times, one to determine that it is the x-default page, other to say that is the English general page and finally to say that it targets GB, is that correct?
2. If my business is translated into 3 languages having 3 main markets: Spanish - Spain, English - UK, and French - France, should I display the hreflang as follows?:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/es" hreflang="es-ES" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/en" hreflang="en-GB" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/fr" hreflang="fr-FR" />
If I do so, what happens with other English speaking markets or French speaking markets, etc. are they going to be able to read the content in the most appropriate language?
Should I define a default hreflang?
3. My last question is about the Hreflang X-default pages and the point is that if my site looks like as follows:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/es" hreflang="es-ES" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/en" hreflang="en-GB" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/fr" hreflang="fr-FR" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com" hreflang="x-default" />
For any specific landing page,should I maintain the hreflang="x-default" ? i.e
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/es/holidays" hreflang="es-ES" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/en/holidays" hreflang="en-GB" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/fr/holidays" hreflang="fr-FR" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.mysite.com/holidays" hreflang="x-default" />
Thanks a lot for your help!
i have an issue with my restaurant based in Amsterdam, Netherlands with international targeting. please help me guys,
Google says-------------------------------------------------------
International Targeting | Language > 'x-default' - no return tagsURLs for your site and alternate URLs in 'x-default' that do not have return tags.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Domain is https://www.motimahal.nl/nl/
Hey David, hopefully you're still reading comments 3 years on!
Question: Does a website which only has one language still need to implement hreflang tags? The plan is to add more languages in the future so I'm assuming it's a good idea to do so now, but is it essential when there is only one language anyway?
Thanks @David Sottimano, it's really helpfull article for me and I'm going to try the same.
So I have some 3 small query.
1. How to create exact hreflang code and where it need to put?
2. How many days it will take to complete update.
3. In case if we received some error in GWT then how to resolve it?
Please advise.
Thanks.
Hi David,
Many thanks for such an informative post. I have a query regarding the Hreflang tag-
If I have a website and I used hreflang tag in sitemap.xml (like https://www.ridgid.com as per your article), so my question is, will Google notify errors in Google search console international targeting section (If there is some error in sitemap hreflang tag placement )? or any other way to find errors for the same?
Overall, I admire your post. I also like you insights for international SEO. Thank you also for sharing with us some example of hreflang behaviour.
Well, to be honest many things are more clearer to me now, pretty new staff. I was totally out of knowledge here.
It may sounds ironic, but this is a pure example why seoMOz is the best. Most freshness source for SEO on the planet. Thumbs up!
We actually changed our name from SEOmoz to Moz last year.
Thanks David. good post.
Very topical at the moment in our agency. Couldn't agree more, as Aussie's we find our selves getting quizzed about why the UK or US site out ranks the local brand quite often - more often than not we have to drive this initiative as its not really an issue for the larger countries.
Has this turned into Reddit? LOL
Maybe ;)
https://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3pb5vz
I would like to test and know how well Google can regionalize text. There are different euphemisms, spellings, and verbiage used in the different English speaking worlds. For example, center vs. centre, color vs. colour, and all of the other nuances of English.
So if it scanned two near-exact copies of text, one written in British English and the other in American English would it be able to determine and thus affect the rankings for various IP blocks / user regions. Even for terms that don't have them involved, i. e. "Blue Widgets."
My gut feeling is that this has been in place for years already, but what I'd like to know is to what effect is it.
Please test this!
Hey David, I found this topic so unique on the internet. The examples are pretty good. While I concentrated on them I came to know a lot of the ranking facts I never knew. Great Job.
What about if you don't have default (read .com) version? For example, you have ca.domain.com, uk.domain.com and us.domain.com targeting respective markets. What would be hreflang="x-default"?
I would like to know your opinion. Thanks!
I just encountered the term international SEO. Would this matter on blogging sites? thanks
Hi David,
Good article. My questions might sound rather basic for this group but I need clarity.
As a basic rule we are trying for follow the best practices with the hope to get best results
I have a few questions below and will appreciate your reply:
Google in their examples use self closing tags - I believe we should use them too although HTML5 allow otherwise.. – pls. comment
Google in their examples put the hreflang="x-default" at the top of the list versus some put the same at the bottom – what is the right way?
Google in their examples use sub-domains for translated pages versus sub—directories – what is the right way? - I did excessive research on the topic before I started some time ago and it is hard to believe I am doing wrong, it also affects all the links in our app etc… so I need this approach clarified once and forever (Multilanguage content will only grow making harder changes in the future).
Google examples - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://en-us.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://en.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://de.example.com/seite.html" />
Most of our Multilanguage help pages are related to our upcoming app release.
https://reverd.com/app/
Thank you.
Hey David Sottimano is it necessary to use hreflang="x-default" /> with other lang tag. Actually I have used lang tag but not getting the visibility of my international pages in SERP as I have not used this x default tag. So I m thinking to use it do you think it will help me??
X-default isn't necessary.
Absolutely fantastic and well documented article. Sorry about my late comment, but I just found your article!
Maybe you do have a bit of time..
If I understand correctly, if I have only an EN version, not targeted to US or CA or UK, I suppose is safe to use just "lang=en", plus the x-default, which will point to the same EN version.
Same for Spanish (ES), French (FR).
It would be the correct implementation?
Thanks!
Ei! Oh! Been looking to solve some dupe content issue since yesterday, and thought this will do. Apparently not!
Looks like we need to go "rambo" on changing some content on the sites we're handling.
Spun content seems like a good strategy. :D Just kidding.
Great article David!!
Great post David and thanks for sharing what works best and what not in terms of hreflang.
As we can see, even big guns screwing it up so badly, it would not be a surprise if we see small firms making the same mistake. Your post is a great help for all of us.
Thanks one again.
How Can I Use Hreflang for W3 Course without edit urls
[link removed by editor]
Hi there, and welcome to Moz! We'd like to ask that you keep your comments relevant to the posts, and refrain from including any irrelevant links. Thanks. =)
Thank you for great points on search engine optimization. As an owner of a small business I have realized that trying to do SEO all by yourself may result in a waste of time. Link building is a tough job and should be done by experts as they have the detailed knowledge about changing cultures in SEO. So, it’s better to contact a legitimate SEO marketing service company which does the job in the tenure of 2-3 months. I was working with Ignite https://ignitecloudware.com It seems to be reliable and professional company.
Many thanks for such an informative post.
Q1: what is the source for your pie chart please? can you share the data/numbers behind the chart?
You're joking, right?
Anyway thanks for all the examples of sites doing it right, we're going through a process on our sites now and seeing some cleanly done examples is the best way of learning for me.
Lets not forget "basic" analytics. if you actually came across this pie chart in Google Analytics you would be the first to complain.
Usually when you present data it requires a title and it shows some figures. It's the equivalent of drawing a line chart with no X or Y axis values.
Seriously, didn't you understand that the pie chart was just a visual metaphor?
Clearly using a legend "people who screwed it up" is not a scientifically accepted measure and is a humourous representation of how often the author sees people getting it wrong.
I honestly worry people here can't seem to understand that, unless I'm now being trolled.
Why is he/she joking ? His/her post makes sense...
Even if you had the data on the chart, unless there was a large enough sample size, it wouldn't be statistically significant anyway.
Due to the fact that it doesn't actually matter if you know exactly how many people get it wrong, no one is going to run around surveying masses of SEO's in order to get an accurate graph. This chart was to visually represent the concept that many people get it wrong.
Even if you could survey people to find those stats, there is survey bias to consider: how many people who don't know about to correctly implement Hreflang are likely to complete this survey. What question can you even ask in order to translate that answer into something meaningful? People don't like to admit they suck, how can you get them to give honest feedback?
TL;DR The request defies logic
It was a bit of a joke, sorry for the confusion!