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.
Is this setup of Hreflang xml sitemap correct?
-
Hi,
I'm trying to setup hreflang for 2 domains. One is purely a US site and the other domain has the language-country as subdomains.
For example:
http://www.websiteUSA.com (Targets English - USA)
https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA (Targets English - Canada)
https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA (Targets French - Canada)
https://www.websiteINT/es (Targets Spanish)
..and so on and so forth for about 12 of these international URLs.
I created an XML sitemap that looks something like this:
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><url><loc>http://www.websiteUSA.com</loc></url></urlset>
<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA</loc></url>
<url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA</loc></url>
Question 1: Is this correct? In my actual file, I have all the countries listed and self-referencing.
Question 2: I'm hosting this file at https://www.websiteINT.com/hreflang.xml AND at http://www.websiteUSA.com/hreflang.xml. Is this correct?
Question 3: Will this help the SERPs direct english speakers from the US to http://www.websiteUSA.com while show SERPs for say English Speakers in Canada to https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA?
Question 4: For some reason, when I put up the xml site, it only listed each URL once instead of the full XML file. Should I have uploaded a text file instead? It doesn't seem to render correctly.
Thank you!
-
Hi Gianluca, thanks for chiming in!
I will look into getting this setup. Should this solve our issue? It seems that currently, the hreflang setup for just the home page isn't working. Google is not showing the US site in Google US or showing the appropriate international site for Google in that specific country.
Any other tips? Hreflang setup for HTML will have to be applied for all pages, for all country-language sites, correct? Where does the canonical point to?
Lastly, if all of this is setup, do I remove country geo-targeting in Search Console?
Thanks!
-
I personally prefer hreflang set up in HTML code, especially because is much easier to verify and correct than when it is implemented in a sitemap file.
-
That's correct.
Long story - there is hreflang in HTML head and in xml sitemap. What's the difference? In HTML you can use same-site or cross-site links (between domains), in XML they are only in same domain. So in XML sitemap you can't use cross-site links (between different domains).
Also in SearchConsole you can set "international targeting" (SearchConsole -> Search Traffic -> International Targeting -> Country) for different sites.
I know that hreflang is little bit complicated but once you setup your first site correct then on next sites will be much faster.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply!
What you're saying is that we cannot reference different domains in the hreflang xml sitemap, is that correct? How do I then, make sure that the english version of the International Site doesn't show up for English Speakers in the US? Are you saying that for the US site, I only need basically one hreflang tag and no references to any other URLs?
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>
Here's the actual XML sitemaps that don't seem to be working according to the tested sitemap in Search Console. You can see the plain text there unless you view source code (as mentioned in Question 4).
- For the USA Site: http://www.shopcompex.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
- For the International Sites: https://www.compexstore.com/hreflang-sitemap.xml
Do I need to just remove the USA domain from the International sitemap and all international domains from the USA sitemap?
I am getting an error in Search Console for both:
| This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location. |
Both referencing the different domains.
-
1. Look perfect. But i'm not sure that you can index in site X pages about site Y even in hreflang. You need to make test on some site. Please note - there is cross site canonical tag and this is ok. There is cross site alternate hreflang and this is ok. But i don't know about sitemap with links to other sites even in hreflang. You need to verify this in SearchConsole - upload sitemap and see for some warnings or errors there. Also don't forget that setup hreflang in HTML code too -> https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16 https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/hreflang-tag https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
2. Answer of this dependent from "validation" of previous question - can you setup sitemap of site X with links to site Y. IMHO you can't. So you must put sitemap about int.com to int.com site and usa.com on same site. Like your example and this is for usa.com site:
<url><loc>https://www.websiteUSA.com/</loc></url>3. Yes, should be.
"Hreflang tags may not help you increase traffic; instead, the goal of using them is to serve the right content to the right users. They help search engines swap the correct version of the page into the SERP based on a user's location and language preferences. For information on how geotargeting can help with rankings, learn about ccTLDs."
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/hreflang-tag4. Can you show me this? Because your sitemap may miss XSL for showing proper. Or you may return different HTTP content type.
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
-
International SEO setup issues canonical URL
My site is www.grocare.com for one region and in.grocare.com for another region. Both of them have the same content except the currency for particular regions. Someone told me that google will take the content as duplicate and not rank either. I have setup hreflang and targeted different regions for both in the search console. I read many article which say canonical urls need to be setup for international seo sites. But Im not sure how to setup canonical urls and whether they are the right way to go . i just don't want my content deranked. Now i have setup hreflang properly after asking the moz community itself. So im hoping to get some help with this query too. TIA
International SEO | | grocare0 -
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.
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
GeoIP Redirects & hreflang
Hello, We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects. Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects. We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory. However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path. My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market. Thanks.
International SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Worldwide and Europe hreflang implementation.
Hi Moz ! We're having quite a discussion here and I'd like to have some inputs. Let me explain the situation and what we plan to do so far. One of our client has two separate markets : World and Europe. Both pages versions will be mostly the same, except for the fact that they will have their own products. So basically, we'd want to show only the European EN version to Europe and the standard EN version to the rest of the world, same goes for FR and ES. As far as IT, DE, CS and SK, they will only be present within the european version. Since we cannot target all Europe with a single hreflang tag, we might have to do it for every single european countries. Regarding this subject, SMX Munich recently had quite an interesting session about this topic with a confirmation coming from John Mueller saying that we can target a single URL more than once with different hreflang tags. You can read more here : http://www.rebelytics.com/multiple-hreflang-tags-one-url/ So having all this in mind, here's the implementation we plan to do : www.example.com/en/ Self canonical www.example.com/fr/ - hreflang = fr www.example.com/es/ - hreflang = es www.example.eu/it/ - hreflang = it www.example.eu/de/ - hreflang = de www.example.eu/cs/ - hreflang = cs www.example.eu/sk/ - hreflang = sk www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = be-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = ch-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = cz-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = de-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = es-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = fr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = uk-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = gr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = hr-fr etc… . This will be done for all european countries (FR, EN and ES). www.example.com/en/ - x-default Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!
International SEO | | Netleaf.ca0 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
Hreflang tag on every page?
Hello Moz Community, I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/. For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated) From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags: /> For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
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
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131