Correct Hreflang & Canonical Implementation for Multilingual Site
-
OK, 2 primary questions for a multilingual site. This specific site has 2 language so I'll use that for the examples.
1 - Self-Referencing Hreflang Tag Necessary?
The first is regarding the correct implementation of hreflang, and whether or not I should have a self-referencing hreflang tag.
In other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), I am uncertain whether the source code should contain the second line below:
Obviously the Spanish version should reference the English version, but does it need to reference itself? I have seen both versions implemented, with seemingly good results, but I want to know the best practice if it exists.
2 - Canonical of Current Language or Default Language?
The second questions is regarding which canonical to use on the secondary language pages. I am aware of the update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines recently that state not to use canonical, but they say not to do it because everyone was messing it up, not because it shouldn't be done.
So, in other words, if I am looking at the source code for http://www.example.com/es/ (our Spanish subfolder), which of the two following canonicals is correct?
- OR
For this question, you can assume that (A) the English version of the site is our default and (B) the content is identical.
Thanks guys, feel free to ask any qualifiers you think are relevant.
-
As a 2014 follow up to anyone reading this thread, Google later released a tag labeled "x-default" that should make the self-referencing canonical question moot.
Read more at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html
-
Thanks John - as mentioned on Twitter I appreciate you sharing tested results. Haven't had time to test on my own sites and certainly don't want to be testing on a client's live production site.
I did notice that one of your posts (http://www.johnfdoherty.com/canonical-tag-delays-googlebot-web-vs-mobile-index/) does have the self-referencing hreflang but the Spanish version does not. Based on recreating your SERP screenshots myself, it looks like it's working fine.
Also, I think my opinion on the Au/En version where you're geotargeting with the same language is that is should be set up the way you indicated, so I'm glad to see more testing that has confirmed that.
Thanks for taking the time to answer - Thanks to Dave as well!
-
Thanks Mike.
Regarding your comment on canonicals - I agree that separate languages should be treated with different canonicals - I think John's response above has confirmed my hunch with testing, however.
Regarding hreflangs - I don't think there's any penalty either. The trouble is that Google, as many of us have experienced, often makes mistakes on code that should function fine. Google Authorship is a good example. So, just trying to work out the best practices for this before I make a client recommendation.
Regarding feedback outside Moz - @IanHowells weighed in on Twitter. His opinion was (A) self-referencing is not necessary and (B) canonicals should be for each language, not pointed to the default language.
-
Hey Kane -
Jumping in here because I told you I would. I've seen it work two different ways.
As you saw in my posts, I have the following configuration:
- Self-referencing canonicals (/es/ canonicalizes to /es/, regular canonicalizes to itself)
- HREFLANG point to each other as the alternate.
When you search "canonical delays with Googlebot" in google.es, the English ranks first and then the Spanish. Of course, with the Spanish search "etiquetta canonical retrasa con googlebot" the Spanish one ranks. This is, of course, a test with two different languages.
I've seen it work with two English-language URLs (Australia and English) where the following is what worked:
- Canonical referencing the primary (English)
- HREFLANG pointing to each other
The title/meta description of the /au/ version disappeared because of the canonical but the /au/ version ranked in google.com/au instead of the regular URL.
The self-referencing HREFLANG seems to not be necessary, but I've never had an issue using it. However, your mileage may vary.
BTW, all of this testing was done by my coworker Dave Sottimano, not me. But these were the findings.
-
I was so excited that I'd found something for you that I didn't read the first part of the article carefully enough. Here's what I think based on the principles of canonicals and hreflangs as I understand them:
Since canonicals are meant to reduce confusion and duplicates, what could you do that would support that goal? If I saw multiple different versions of a product page that were essentially identical (perhaps they had different filtering options or search terms but resolved to the same content), then consolidating them all would make perfect sense. If, however, I saw two pages that had the exact same meaning but were in different languages, I would consider them as separate--you wouldn't accidentally mistake one for the other.
As for hreflangs, the second article mentioned 4 versions of the content and listed all 4 hreflangs. The idea is that the search engine could discover all the versions of the content quickly and select the right one for the searcher's language and location. I can't imagine there being a penalty for listing every one, either.
Have you had any other feedback (from outside SEOmoz)?
-
Thanks for your response Mike.
Re: Canonicals:
The first Google blog post you linked to is applicable when some of the content is translated. For example, if your English Facebook profile showed up on the Spanish section of the site, but they only translated buttons, nav menus, etc.
"We’re trying to specifically improve the situation where the template is localized but the main content of a page remains duplicate/identical across language/country variants."
So, this isn't a perfect match for my situation, which is a 100% translated page, which changes the reasoning behind the proposed canonical solution in that post - so that question is still in the air for me.
Re: Self-Referential hreflang Tags:
The second article is definitely relevant and is the primary announcement of hreflang, but doesn't clearly indicate whether the self-referential hreflang tag for the page you're on is necessary. Now, I've seen it used both ways successfully, so my first question is somewhat moot. John Doherty's testing from January 2012 and the homepage of WPML.org each use a different method, but Google.com and Google.es seem to be able to sort out each domain correctly.
-
Google shared this post to define how to handle both issues: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html
The idea presented there is to pick the default language of the page--for most sites in the U.S. it would be English.
Then all the foreign language versions of the page should set their canonical to point to the page using the default language.
Finally, each page is to list the alternative languages with hreflang link tags.
An updated post says that ALL the languages should be listed: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
So I would set the canonicals to:
for all variants (in English or any other language)
and list all of the hreflang links on every page:
This would put you in compliance with Google's main post on the subject and their more recent update.
--Mike
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
-
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
Hello, It's been a year since we launched our website and at first, we did it with a domain name called misitio.co. We have just bought the domain name mysite.com and my doubts are what should I do with the domains I have in other countries, for example .mx .br, should I redirect them to mysite.com or manage them independently? Thank you very much
International SEO | | Isabelcabreromunoz1 -
Multiregional / Multilingual SEO - Subfolders Question
Hello all, I wonder if you can help me... I have a question about subfolders in multi-regional / multi-lingual SEO - more specifically in reference to targeting the UK and the US. Having looked at some global websites these are the types of implementations I've most commonly seen: UK subfolders .com/uk .com/gb .com/gb/en-gb | .com/en-GB .com/gb-en .com/en-gb .com/uk/en US subfolders .com/us .com/us/en-us | .com/en-US .com/us-en .com/en-us .com/us/en Are any of these approaches better than others or is it all a matter of personal preference? What's the reason for using .com/gb over .com/uk (or vice versa) for example? Secondly, my assumption is that the examples above which include language subfolders do so because these companies are targeting different speaking users within these countries. Would I be right to think that since the organisation I work for is only targeting the American speakers in the US, we wouldn't need to go so far as to have language subfolders in addition to location subfolders? Would be great to get some feedback / suggestions! Thanks!
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Redirect to 'default' or English (/en) version of site?
Hi Moz Community! I'm trying to work through a thorny internationalization issue with the 'default' and English versions of our site. We have an international set-up of: www.domain.com (in english) www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/en-gb www.domain.com/fr-fr www.domain.com/de-de and so on... All the canonicals and HREFLANGs are set up, except the English language version is giving me pause. If you visit www.domain.com, all of the internal links on that page (due to the current way our cms works) point to www.domain.com/en/ versions of the pages. Content is identical between the two versions. The canonical on, say, www.domain.com/en/products points to www.domain.com/products. Feels like we're pulling in two different directions with our internationalization signals. Links go one way, canonical goes another. Three options I can see: Remove the /en/ version of the site. 301 all the /en versions of pages to /. Update the hreflangs to point the EN language users to the / version. **Redirect the / version of the site to /en. **The reverse of the above. **Keep both the /en and the / versions, update the links on / version. **Make it so that visitors to the / version of the site follow links that don't take them to the /en site. It feels like the /en version of the site is redundant and potentially sending confusing signals to search engines (it's currently a bit of a toss-up as to which version of a page ranks). I'm leaning toward removing the /en version and redirecting to the / version. It would be a big step as currently - due to the internal linking - about 40% of our traffic goes through the /en path. Anything to be aware of? Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | MaxSydenham0 -
Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links). Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.". Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text? How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do. Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links. Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings. Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
International SEO | | raido0 -
Naming URL for Russian version of the site
Hi, Our site has two languages: English and Russian. My question is that should I use Cyrillic letters in the URL structure and file naming of the Russian version of the site, as Russian users are searching for information by using Russian words not English words? Thanks in advance, Sam
International SEO | | Awaraman0 -
Hreflang hindering performance?
I want to add hreflang on my website but the dev guys think it will hinder performance? Any thoughts/experience with this one way or the other? Thanks!
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
How to optimise a site for 2 countries
Hi there - Any help with the below much appreciated I am helping an Australian company, producing packaging products for businesses. Their site is hosted in Australia and their offices are in Australia. They have asked me to take care of both on-page and off-page SEO so that they rank for keywords related to their products - e.g. 'cardboard boxes'. This should be fairly straightforward for Australian based (.com.au) searchers, but they also supply their products to South Africa, and so want their results to show up also for South African based (.co.za) searchers. Also consider: it is not typical for searchers for these products to use geomodifiers in their search terms there is no unique content for the South African market versus the Australian... the product information is essentially identical. What should we do to ensure their results show up equally for those in South Africa as well as Australia? I am considering building a completely separate site, hosted in South Africa and specifically for the S.A market, but will the duplicate content effect be an issue? Also, this would essentially mean double the SEO effort, is there no way I could achieve our goals more efficiently? many thanks to any help
International SEO | | dnaynay0