Post on 21-Jan-2018
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You’re Going To Screw Up Internationalization
Presented by:Patrick Stox @patrickstox
Technical SEO - IBM
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You’ve Got This Right?
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Can Anyone Answer This?
Does Bing use the “content-language” meta tag?
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us">
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The Tag Is Non-Conforming
The last reference was in 2011:https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-websites-country-and-language
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Okay Cool, But Do They Use It?
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How Many Sites Use Hreflang Tags?
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Lots Of Common HREFLANG Issues
SEMrush did a study of 20,000 websites:https://www.semrush.com/blog/the-most-common-hreflang-mistakes-infographic/
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Is this wrong?
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No Errors In GSC With Underscores
Looks like Google lets it slide, although standards and best practices say to use “–” instead of “_”https://twitter.com/dsottimano/status/867315538057474049
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Is This Wrong?
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You Don’t Need Self-Referencing Hreflang Tags
Is it essential to have self-referencing hreflang tags?
John Mueller: No.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjbaDP-P7PA&t=24m39s
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Is This Wrong?
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You Don’t Have To Use Absolute URLs
https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/702080129804189696
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Is This Wrong?
Questionable
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Even Tools Get Things Wrong
X-default can be used for auto-redirecting, serving dynamic content, or as a language selector page.
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Even Tools Get Things Wrong
X-default can be used for auto-redirecting, serving dynamic content, or as a language selector page.
Example 1: https://technicalseo.com/seo-tools/hreflang/ marks a redirected x-default page as incorrect, but it’s the tool that’s wrong.
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Even Tools Get Things Wrong
X-default can be used for auto-redirecting, serving dynamic content, or as a language selector page.
Example 2: Screaming Frog says that there are no return links on any x-default that’s auto-redirected. Of course there aren’t, it’s redirected, but it’s the tool that’s wrong.
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No One Believes You
When a tool says it’s wrong and you say it’s not.
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Things Get Even More Fun
• Millions of pages• Multiple CMS’s• Multiple Infrastructures• Redirects
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Wasn’t It Hard Enough?
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All On One Page
Googlebot crawls from the US, putting all versions of content on one page just means they only see one version.
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Redirecting Users With Some Logic
Geo-IP, cookies, whatever is also bad. This pretty much means Google sees only one version again, even if you have more.
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Redirecting Users With Some Logic
Geo-IP, cookies, whatever is also bad. This pretty much means Google sees only one version again, even if you have more.
If you see the wrong language in your titles or meta descriptions, it’s probably this.
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Check Your Stack
Encoding characters in URLs with UTF-8 is fine with Google, but there may be a point of failure in your tech stack where it is not supported.
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Page Serves From A Different URL Than How It’s Indexed
Sometimes pages are offloaded with a 302 and a canonical set to the original URL to keep it indexed. You need the indexed version in your tags.
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Page Serves From A Different URL Than How It’s Indexed
If anyone still uses an m. it looks like you will need to point the hreflang tags on the m. to the desktop version for the upcoming mobile-first index, maybe?
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Tags In Multiple Places?
• HTTP Header• <head>• Sitemap
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Tags In Multiple Places? Where?
• From CMS?• From server?• Injected with JS?• Coming from theme?
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<head> Break
http://ohgm.co.uk/hreflang-tags-not-respected-how-to-solve/They moved hreflang tags above some JS because Google wasn’t inspecting them, but why did that work?
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<head> Break
http://ohgm.co.uk/hreflang-tags-not-respected-how-to-solve/They didn’t inspect the DOM. If they did, they’d likely see that the JS broke the <head> section early and the hreflang tags were being treated as if they were in the <body>.
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<head> Break
http://ohgm.co.uk/hreflang-tags-not-respected-how-to-solve/You can’t have hreflang tags in the body because they could be used for hijacking.
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Duplicate Pages Are The Worst
For hreflang to work, A has to reference B and B has to reference A. If 2 pages are duplicates, Google can fold them together and only one will be indexed.
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Duplicate Pages Are The WorstHow can you have A>B and B>A if Google thinks A=C and A isn’t indexed?https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/ezMvrlRWuDk/6XWuM1fIDgAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=83&v=isW-Ke-AJJUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isW-Ke-AJJU&t=27m15s
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It Can Take Months For Google To Crawl All Versions
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Everyone Wants A Quick Fix
No one wants to hear it’s fixed, but now you have to wait. If the wrong version shows, it’s not fixed in their minds.
“Can’t you call someone at Google?”“Can’t we pay someone to fix this?”
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Advice:
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Check Everything Repeatedly
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Expect Things To Break
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You’ll Never Get It Right Manually
Automate tags – middleware connecting systemsAutomated testing
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@patrickstox