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.
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?
-
Correct!
-
Hi Martijn,
Thanks for your response. So, you're saying it's okay to use the same URL for both "en" and "en-US"?
I would love to get some input from other Mozers.
Thanks!
-
As far as I'm aware this is OK to do as they don't always have to be different URLs. Alternatively, I would make sure that you can focus on en instead of en-US so that it would avoid the language everywhere.
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
-
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 -
Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API
We have a site currently in development that is using the Google Translate API and I am having a massive issue getting screaming frog to crawl and all of our non-native English speaking employees have read through the translated copy in their native language and the general consensus is it reads at a 5th grade level at best. My questions to the community is, has anyone implemented this API on a site and has it a) helped with gaining traffic from other languages/countires and b) has it hurt there site from an SEO standpoint.
International SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
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!
International SEO | | SylviaH0 -
International SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.
Hi! My UK based company just recently made the decision to let the US market operate their ecommerce business independently. Initially, both markets were operating off the same domain using sub-directories (i.e: www.brandname.com/en-us/ , www.brandname.com/en-gb/ ) Now that the US team have broken away from the domain - they are now using www.brandnameUSA.com while the UK continues to use www.brandname.com/en-gb/. The content is similar across both domains - however, the new US website has been able to consolidate several product variations onto single product pages where the UK website is using individual product pages for each variation. We have placed a geo-filter on the main domain which is 301 redirecting North American traffic looking for www.brandname.com to www.brandnameUSA.com However, since the domain change has taken place, product pages from the original domain are now indexing alongside the new US websites product pages in US search results. The UK website wants to be the default destination for all international traffic. My question is - how do we correctly setup hrlang tags across two separate TLDs and how do we handle a situation where multiple product pages on the "default" domain have been consolidated into one product page on the new USA domain? This is how we are currently handling it: "en-us" href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" /> href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" />
International SEO | | alexcbrands0 -
Mixed English and Arabic URLs
I'm currently working with a global brand who need localisation in each of their territories. They're operating on a single .com domain name, with different language versions in separate directories. Example:
International SEO | | Guyboz
domain.com/en/
domain.com/fr/
domain.com/ar/ We're using ahreflang tags to make sure Google shows the correct language version for each region. Now onto my question... As the domain is a .com with an English company name, when it comes to the Arabic version of the website, will having a completely mixed language URL like this be detrimental to the site's performance in searches from the middle east? Currently we're coming up with URLs like the following: domain.com/blog/عنوان بلوق عربية طويلة حقا على شيء مثير جدا للاهتمام Is this a bad thing?0 -
Should product-pages with different currencies have different URLs?
Here is a question that should be of interest for small online merchants selling internationally in multiple currencies. When, based on geolocation, a product-page is served with different currencies, should a product-page have a different URL for each currency? Thanks.
International SEO | | AdrienOLeary0 -
What countries does Google crawl from? Is it only US or do they crawl from Europe and Asia, etc.?
Where does Google crawl the web from? Is it in the US only, or do they do it from a European base too? The reason for asking is for GeoIP redirection. For example, if a website is using GeoIP redirection to redirect all US traffic to a .com site and all EU traffic to a .co.uk site, will Google ever see the .co.uk site?
International SEO | | Envoke-Marketing2 -
Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.
International SEO | | Amjath0