Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
-
Hi,
I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this:
-
(cd = Congo, a completely random example)
-
etc...
Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Vince
-
-
Nope, not needed, unless you are changing the language.
Now, if you wanted to do one big site and then offer certain pages that are the same except for "translation" - and it's a local dialect translation, then yes, HREFLANG would be used in that situation.
So you could use HREFLANG rather than a canonical between the kinda duplicated pages if they are changed only in dialect translation. But since there is different content per country, you would still need that geo-targeted section for the content that is different.
domain.com/congo/about-congo-office (I don't know the country code for Congo) - No hreflang, will be geo-targeted with the subfolder.
domain.com/congo/similar-product-page - If just translated to the local Congo English dialect, use HREFLANG with all similarly "translated" pages. If not changed at all, use canonical to the original page. If changed overall to target the Congo market, no canonical or HREFLANG needed.
-
For option 2, or 1 for that matter, would you use hreflang to do any of the targeting or just geotarget with WMT?
-
Hmmm, I am thinking there are two possible solutions.
1. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), but use canonical for the pages that are duplicated, the pages that are the same across all countries.
Also use javascript to detect a new user's location (don't auto redirect though, ask) to get them to the "right" version of the page, if they come into the non-country focused general page.2. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), and spend the resources to change the content on each page just enough to target that country. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to target that group.
Option 2 is the most time and resource intensive. Option 1 can be messed up quickly if the technical implementation isn't done right.
I know that's not a clean answer but international never is. There are always so many moving parts.
-
Yes. Beneficial information would be local events, customer stories/wins, press releases, local sales contact information, local partners, etc
-
This is tough. Let me ask you one question: For a potential customer in South Africa, is there any different information they need to see than someone in the Congo, or somewhere else in the world that speaks English? If yes, what kind of different information would they need to see?
-
We choose to target our sites based on where the regional/country offices are located. So in the example of South Africa our main African office is located in South Africa so the site content (events, forms, news) is based primarily on South Africa. That being said much of the content is duplicated from our main corporate English site. Our South African site mainly targets South Africa but could potentially go after any English speaking African country. Since the ZA site is primarily targeting a country with a duplicated language, is your recommendation to only geo-target via webmaster tools and not utilize hreflang? Most of our regions/countries do their best to translate the language on their sites but many follow the same tactic as my South African example, some content is local but most is a duplicate of our Corporate English site. What is the best tactic to not have duplicate content and to get the right sites ranking in the correct local version of Google?
-
Excellent answer Kate!
-
This is one of the instances that made me change the way I see the HREFLANG tag. So many people disagree but hear me out.
The HREFLANG tag is only for language differentiation. There are language and country codes because, as you point out, there are many countries that speak the same language and some have some major dialect changes. The biggest example being UK and US English. Therefore, if you have a site developed in US English that you want to "translate" to UK English, but not change the content of the site other than that, you would use HREFLANG tags to note the difference in the pages to Google. Since you changed nothing else (no currency changes, no legal changes, no product set changes), there is no reason for country targeting. You are just translating the same content ... aka changing a few words.
Now, let's say that you are operating a site that has a geo-targeted section to South Africa. Depending on the setup, you might not need HREFLANG tags at all. If you are changing the content other than through translation to target South Africa, that is geo-targeting. Targeting the country.
You can do both geo-target AND change language settings. For instance, if you are a Canadian company that legally has to have all of it's content in Canadian French (fr-ca) and Canadian English (en-ca), you would use HREFLANG between those two. But then you decide to move into the US. You might create a subfolder, subdomain, or ccTLD specific to the US market since you can't offer all of your products or services over there due to regulations. You would geo-target the new section/site to the United States, but not use HREFLANG since the content is targeted at a different country. You would want to make sure the content changed enough and the Canadian English pages might rank for a while but over time the US site/section would get stronger.
I hope that all makes sense.
In your instance where you have geo-targeted, I assume that is for a reason. However, because you have geo-targeted that section to South Africa, you cannot geo-target it to the Congo as well. You would either need to great a section for the Congo and geo-target that, or, if geo-targeting isn't really needed, use one big site and country specific translations. Only do this if your content is the same across the board and you are changing some of the wording to local dialects.
If you want to know more, check out my international search tool that might help you find what structure you should have: http://www.katemorris.com/issg/
-
What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries?
the only way to target everyone Speaking the language on the one URL is telling Google Webmaster tools not to specify a location or geo-target.
I do not know if that is the best method for you but if you just want to target English with one subfolder and have multiple countries you would take that away if you geo-targeted it to a country.
May be the best ways to handle it is multiple subfolders I wish I had a better answer for you but if you want to use one sub folder it would be to not target and to use an IP address from a server inside the country you wish to target the most.
e.g
All you have to do is list the alternative version of the pages and have the x default at the bottom. For example, this is what you would do for the English Canadian version:
Specific regions in countries can be done the same way you would do something in Canada.
the other method would be to pick the countries with additional subfolders.
you can target the same language in multiple countries by not adding to the additional information
Canada for instance let's say you did not want to target French and you wanted to target the United States as well
with one subfolder it could not be done. If you set it up to something like this I know that's one subfolder and one domain
-
Why would I target the main domain to a country that I have a subfolder for? My question is based on targeting one site (that is already set up via a subfolder) with the same language to multiple countries. What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries? Is this possible?
It may help to understand that my site is set up with multiple subfolders that target countries or regions. Some sites are translated and have local content for a specific country or region and other sites are in English but have content specific to that local country or region. I am worried about the sites that are in English but should be targeted to a specific region or country.
-
the answer is yes you can
here are some more thorough resources
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
http://www.branded3.com/blogs/implementing-hreflang-tag/
http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2232347/a-simple-guide-to-using-rel-alternate-hreflang-x
you can create the tags that this tool or create a site map using the tool below
http://www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/
http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php
you can validate everything with this as well
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/case-study-the-impact-of-hreflang-tag/
by the way the way you can validate with screaming Frog the same can be done with deep crawl on a larger level.
hope this helps,
Tom
-
you could target one language using this method
as long as you add a subfolder or a sub domain preferably a subfolder. You can keep adding entries.
Take a look at http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
&
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation
Hope this helps,
Tom
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
-
Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?
My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags
Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets
Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David
International SEO | | Davide19840 -
Hreflang Alternate & Pagination
Hi everybody, So I'm setting up hreflang tags on an ecommerce site. The sites are in the USA and Canada. The Canadian site will have fewer products than the American site, meaning that there won't be as many pages in each category as there are on the American site. What is the correct way to handle hreflang tags on these extra category pages? To put this another way, the American site may have a category with 3 pages of products, while the Canadian equivalent only has 2 pages of products. What happens to this extra American category page (example.com/widget-category/page-3) ? Does it get an hreflang tag linking to the first page of the equivalent Canadian category (example.ca/widget-category/)? Does it not get any hreflang tags because it has no true Canadian counterpart? Does it matter at all if it has a canonical tag pointing to the first page in the series anyway (example**.com**/widget-category/)? Thanks, Andrew B.
International SEO | | ABullis0 -
How can I restrict the domains country by country?
Hello, I have Two Domains one is xyz.co.uk and other is xyz.com Now, my main target for .com is United States, and I don't want to open that .com domain in any other country especially India. The same with the .co.uk, I dont want to open .co.uk in other countries. I did it with some developer help but it gave me redirected error in Google Webmaster. Can anyone please guide me how I can do this the proper way ? And Other issues is, how can I implement ,if any user in United States open xyz.co.uk than he should redirect to the .com version. Thank you.
International SEO | | AmitTulsiyani0 -
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
International SEO | | Monologix
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!0 -
Website Target in Europe
Hi, I am planning a site to target in Europe and I expect to translate my site into ten different languages namely English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish. I am doing some study of this case in targeting different countries for SEO, most of the advise are the following: a. Build 10 different websites and target different geographical location in Google Webmaster b. Get 10 different country specific domains for 10 different websites I would like to hear any suggestion if there is anything better than this ? I had all the materials and translation ready but building 10 different websites or getting 10 different domains are very time consuming and costly. I would be appreciated if any one had any advise for me to make the website more management friendly. Thank you. Tom
International SEO | | Stevejobs20110 -
How can I see what my web site looks like from a different country?
I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!
International SEO | | Dennis-529610