Hreflang Tags - Brighton SEO April 2018 - Emily Mace

Emily Mace
OBAN INTERNATIONAL
Diagnosing issues with Hreflang tags in sitemaps
and on page
@IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanIntl
http://www.slideshare.net/Oban-IDForum

Hreflang tags –
when it all goes
terribly wrong!
2

@IAmTheLaserHawk | obaninternational.com3
Targeting content by country

You aren’t the only one’s asking
Rand Fishkin
@randfish

Or finding it hard…
John Mueller
@johnmu

And we’ve all seen it go wrong…
Your UK site ranks
EVERYWHERE
But….
Your German site
ranks in Norway…

What could possibly go wrong?
7

So what might go wrong?
There’s really only a
few things to get
wrong
But they can go
wrong quickly…

Conflicts in your tags
Canonicals must
match
And messages on each
language site must be
the same too

Return to sender…
URLs must
reciprocally link
for fear of
No Return errors
from Google

Broken, redirecting, wrong
Links in Hreflang tags
should be live
Avoid redirects on
translated URLS

Having communication issues
There’s so many ways
this can happen
Incorrect combinations of
languages and countries
and made up codes are
the most common….

The Star Wars error *
Targeting Austria with
the combination
AT-AT
Austrian being a
language
*It’s the Emily LEGO slide!

Same, same but different…
Japan has
different language
and country codes
(JA-JP)
So does Sweden
(SV-SE)….

I’m not sure so I’ll make it up…
I don’t know how to
target my Global
English site
I know: EN-WW
Worldwide is a
country, right?

The EU issue

The EU issue
No,
not that one!

The EU issue
Targeting your EU site in English to
EVERY EU country individually….

Remember!
Each individual URL can only be targeted
to ONE language and country – multiple
targets for the same page look fake!

The other EU issue

Code reminder: on page
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ie"
hreflang="en-ie" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ca"
hreflang="en-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au"
hreflang="en-au" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en"
hreflang="en" />

Code reminder: sitemap
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/english/
</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch
/"
/>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.example.com/sch
weiz-deutsch/"
/>

One final place errors occur
The Emily rant:

@IAmTheLaserHawk | obaninternational.com
The Emily rant:
IP SERVING:
JUST SAY NO!!!
24
One final place errors occur

Sitemaps or on
page?
How do I choose?
25

Simple guideline…
Sitemap
•Ecommerce
•Large sites
•Regularly updated sites
On page •Everyone else

But this is SEO….
There’s no silver
bullet here…
Consider how your
site set up works
and talk to your
devs

How the hell do I
diagnose the issues
though?
28

But wait… do I even need to do this?
Google says
it fixes things
for me, so
why bother?

Where are issues occurring?
Use ranking information to see which
site is competing against which
is awesome for this

Check domains in each country

Where are issues occurring?
Traffic from the wrong country in Analytics

Let’s spot check code
Sense check those
language and country
codes – ensure there’s no
made up combinations…
Make sure the self
referencing link is there too

Let’s spot check code, again…
Does the link agree with
the canonical tag?
Are the Hreflang tags in
the right place?

Let’s spot check our sitemap
Does every page have
Hreflang tags
In all sitemaps
Including self referencing tag?
Check all the same elements
here too

Sitemap 101 – the refresh
I don’t need to say this but….
Live pages? No redirects?
Nothing blocked by
robots.txt
You know the drill…

What do your tools show?
Errors from Google
Search Console
Download data…we’ll
need it later…

Don’t forget Screaming Frog…
Easily pull off data
about missing, non
canonical, incorrect
language codes etc…
Missing Non
Canonical
Wrong
Country

We’re SEOs – let’s Excel!!!
Because data
Vlookup or Match are
your friends, cross
checking what works
and what doesn’t…

Setting up your Excel playground
Crawl all the sites and set up a tab for each
crawl – copy internal All for each site here
Download Hreflang tag tab from Screaming
Frog and create a new tag for the hreflangs
for each country
Add data from GSC and
Hreflang tag errors in SF

Excel playground fun

Let data comparison commence
Check to see if all pages have a Hreflang
tag – highlight what’s missing
Are all Hreflang tags the same?
Highlight what’s different

Correcting issues
Easiest fix is one which gets your devs on
board
We find simple code examples work best
Take our your datacrunching…
Just show the result!

Simple mapping
If you are ecommerce, mapping can be
simple – URLs with SKUs in are your
friend

Less simple mapping
Sadly, it’s manual!

Get it right for great things

Hreflang Tags - Brighton SEO April 2018 - Emily Mace

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