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Website have multiple languages but same URL

         

saurabhshar

1:57 pm on Mar 9, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Hi All,

I am new here. Before posting this question, I have researched here and found similar post - [webmasterworld.com...]

But, this post is too old and I think Google & SEO have evolved since then.

I have a website (let's say example.com - targeting internationally) and 2 subdomains (uae.example.com - targeting UAE and ru.example.com - targeting Russia). I have 2 languages for example.com and uae.example.com (English and Arabic). English is our default language for both versions, but user can translate that content by choosing language from menu bar as Arabic.

I have recently put href lang tag as follows on all 3 versions (example.com, uae.example.com & ru.example.com) because the content is same except currency change:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/" hreflang="en-ae" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://ru.example.com/" hreflang="ru-ru" />

can someone please suggest me how google treats my site? Should I add hreflang tag for arabic version too? something like below:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/" hreflang="ar" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/" hreflang="en-ae" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/" hreflang="ar-ae" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://ru.example.com/" hreflang="ru-ru" />

Will above hreflang code work? Please assist here. It will help me a lot. Thanks

[edited by: engine at 5:51 pm (utc) on Mar 9, 2021]
[edit reason] please use example.com [/edit]

levo

8:40 pm on Mar 9, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



"Use different URLs for different language versions"
[developers.google.com...]

<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/" hreflang="en-ae" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/ar/" hreflang="ar-ae" />

saurabhshar

7:22 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Hi Levo,

Thanks for your response and I agree it is the best and recommended approach, but will my approach work or not? How Google treat this hreflang implementation?

lammert

10:24 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Best case scenario, Google will just ignore it. When spidering the URLs, their bot will determine that the content is in English and will treat it as such. If you (machine) translate the site when a visitor decides to do so is none of their business. The translated information is not accessible through a direct link and therefore worthless for the Google SERPs.

Worst case scenario, Google will demote your page somewhat because your hreflang mentions a language which their bot cannot find. But frankly I think this is highly unlikely. With so much crap around on the internet, the bot is used to ignore information which doesn't make sense.

saurabhshar

11:16 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Thanks Lammert for your quick response.

I am thinking the same way and I am not looking to rank for Arabic, but when we made Russia site live (on 18th Feb), my traffic goes down from 200+ to 40 users per day. We have fixed the Hreflang tag issue (self-reference error) on 4th March, but the traffic is not improved yet.

Is it possible that Google is demoting our pages? (Though our rankings are stable and clicks & impressions are increasing. There is no error in GSC too.)

lammert

11:29 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



By making the Russian site live, you basically created a significant duplicate content problem. As you mentioned, all domains have the same content, only the currency differs. Isn't it easier to use only the www domain, and let the currency switch on the fly on the pages based on GeoIP location, or user preference?

saurabhshar

11:37 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



It was the client's requirement.

Should I wait for one more week as we fixed hreflang Tag on 4th March only? Or Google still sees it as duplicate content? Please suggest.

lammert

11:47 am on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



A 40/200 visitors per day site is not what Google sees as high priority, so it may take several weeks to see changes. If it is the client's wish, do what they tell you, inform them of the possible bad effects and move-on. Life is too short to take responsibility for wrong ideas of other people.

FYI, hreflang is mainly a negative ranking signal. It tells Google which content NOT to show if better language alternatives are available. There are almost no non-user visible items in a HTML file which Google uses as a positive signal nowadays.

not2easy

2:12 pm on Mar 10, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I would suggest that if all versions are identical other than a link to auto-translate then you want to be certain that those alt language duplicates are not included on your sitemap and would be improved with a canonical link to the original URL. A noindex meta for the directories - if they are not virtual - would be an improvement though I would not block robots (using robots.txt). The href-lang tags should not be included unless the URL is for an actual page in that language.

Your examples also show some pages with www URLs and some without, that would be additional duplicate content as Google sees https://www.example.com/ as a different domain from https://example.com/ and that should be handled to only use one form. If you do not choose a preferred format and rewrite the URLs to that one format you can have multiple views of the same content on a variety of URLs which are all seen as duplicate content.
These URLs would all show the same content:
https://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/
https://example.com/
http://example.com/

Are these all hard-coded pages or virtually generated pages such as you might have on a WordPress site? Sorry, that's not clear but makes a difference.

saurabhshar

11:36 am on Mar 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



Hi Lammert,

Thanks for your response.

@not2easy - we are only following one version on the website. We used Magento to build our eCommerce website that falls under the tobacco category. Also, we are not using separate URLs for Arabic version, so unable to add canonical for that.

not2easy

12:48 pm on Mar 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



If you are not using separate URLs for languages then you do not want to add hreflang= tags to anything. For a good visual understanding of when and where to use the language meta tags, see https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo

If these URLs exist, then you are using different URLs for languages. Google does not see these as the same domain but they can find the same content on "all 3" domains.
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://uae.example.com/" hreflang="en-ae" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://ru.example.com/" hreflang="ru-ru" />

saurabhshar

1:25 pm on Mar 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

5+ Year Member



@not2easy - Thanks for clarification. I will surely check the link you have shared and proceed accordingly.
 

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