Hreflang on non-canonical pages
-
Hi!
I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains.
1 product info page
2 same product but GREEN
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW**Question: **
Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1.
Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element.
Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language.
Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language?
Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ?
/Lars
-
Wow, that's a tricky one. I haven't seen a lot of good data on rel="alternate" hreflang="x" yet, other than general suggestions that it's worth trying and seems to sometimes work. Technically, Google would say that the green/red/yellow versions aren't true duplicates, but practically, I think the canonical here is a good approach.
My gut feeling is that the canonical will overpower the hreflang - adding the alternate language versions to the color variants won't hurt you, but it probably won't do anything. If it were me, I think I'd go with your first approach - just add the hreflang tag to the canonical version and leave it off the variants. Monitor that - see how it impacts your international rankings, and go from there.
-
Have you had any joy with this yet?
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
-
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
On-Page Problem
Hello Mozzers, A friend has a business website and the on-page stuff is done really bad. He wants to rank for: conference room furnishing, video conference, digital signage. (Don't worry about the keywords, it's just made up for an example.) For these three services he has a page: hiswebsite.com/av AV stands for audio and video and is the h1. If you click on one of the service, the url doesn't change. Like if you click on video conference, just the text changes, the url stays /av. All his targeted pages got an F Grade, I am not surprised, the services titles are in . Wouldn't it be a lot better to make an own page for every service with a targeted keyword, like hiswebsite.com/video-conference All this stuff is on /av, how will a 301 resirect work to all the service pages, does this make sense? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | grobro1 -
Rel canonical for partner sites - product pages only or also homepage and other key pages?
Hello there Our main site is www.arenaflowers.com. We also run a number of partner sites (eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/). We've relcanonical'd the products on the partner site back to the main (arenaflowers.com) site. eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013 rel canonicals back to: http://www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013). My question: Should we also relcanonical the homepage and other key pages on partner sites back to the main arenaflowers website too? The content is similar but not identical. We don't want our partner sites to be outranking the original (as is the case on kw flower delivery for example). (NB this situation may be complicated by the fact we appear to have an unnatural link penalty on af.com (and when we did an upgrade a while back, the af.com site fell out of the index altogether due to some issues with our move to AWS.) We're getting professional SEO advice on this but wondered what the Moz community's thoughts were.. Cheers, Will
Technical SEO | | ArenaFlowers.com0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
Numerous 404 errors on crawl diagnostics (non existent pages)..
As new as them come to SEO so please be gentle.... I have a wordpress site setup for my photography business. Looking at my crawl diagnostics I see several 4xx (client error) alerts. These all show up to non existent pages on my site IE: | http://www.robertswanigan.com/happy-birthday-sara/109,97,105,108,116,111,58,104,116,116,112,58,47,47,109,97,105,108,116,111,58,105,110,102,111,64,114,111,98,101,114,116,115,119,97,110,105,103,97,110,46,99,111,109 | Totally lost on what could be causing this. Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | Swanny8110 -
Why are these pages duplicates when canonical is defined?
The SEOmoz reports indicate that the following pages are duplicates even though the canonical tag has been added. http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/quotes http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/brief Is this normal?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Am I Doing this Canonical Right?
Hi,I admit to new to the Mod Rewrite.Here is my mod rewrite in my .htaccess# Begin non-www page protection # <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | Force7
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule> # End non-www page protection #If I have my home page set toI really want the canonical to be www.domain.com no trailing slashDid I create a confllict, and if so, how should I change it?0 -
Secondary Pages Indexed over Primary Page
I have 4 pages for a single product Each of the pages link to the Main page for that product Google is indexing the secondary pages above my preferred landing page How do I fix this?
Technical SEO | | Bucky0