Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?

SimonByrneIFS

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

katemorris

Nope, not needed, unless you are changing the language.

Now, if you wanted to do one big site and then offer certain pages that are the same except for "translation" - and it's a local dialect translation, then yes, HREFLANG would be used in that situation.

So you could use HREFLANG rather than a canonical between the kinda duplicated pages if they are changed only in dialect translation. But since there is different content per country, you would still need that geo-targeted section for the content that is different.

domain.com/congo/about-congo-office (I don't know the country code for Congo) - No hreflang, will be geo-targeted with the subfolder.

domain.com/congo/similar-product-page - If just translated to the local Congo English dialect, use HREFLANG with all similarly "translated" pages. If not changed at all, use canonical to the original page. If changed overall to target the Congo market, no canonical or HREFLANG needed.

SimonByrneIFS

For option 2, or 1 for that matter, would you use hreflang to do any of the targeting or just geotarget with WMT?

katemorris

Hmmm, I am thinking there are two possible solutions.

1. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), but use canonical for the pages that are duplicated, the pages that are the same across all countries.
Also use javascript to detect a new user's location (don't auto redirect though, ask) to get them to the "right" version of the page, if they come into the non-country focused general page.

2. Create a "site" per country (subfolders like you have now), and spend the resources to change the content on each page just enough to target that country. It doesn't have to be much, just enough to target that group.

Option 2 is the most time and resource intensive. Option 1 can be messed up quickly if the technical implementation isn't done right.

I know that's not a clean answer but international never is. There are always so many moving parts.

SimonByrneIFS

Yes. Beneficial information would be local events, customer stories/wins, press releases, local sales contact information, local partners, etc

katemorris

This is tough. Let me ask you one question: For a potential customer in South Africa, is there any different information they need to see than someone in the Congo, or somewhere else in the world that speaks English? If yes, what kind of different information would they need to see?

SimonByrneIFS

We choose to target our sites based on where the regional/country offices are located. So in the example of South Africa our main African office is located in South Africa so the site content (events, forms, news) is based primarily on South Africa. That being said much of the content is duplicated from our main corporate English site. Our South African site mainly targets South Africa but could potentially go after any English speaking African country. Since the ZA site is primarily targeting a country with a duplicated language, is your recommendation to only geo-target via webmaster tools and not utilize hreflang? Most of our regions/countries do their best to translate the language on their sites but many follow the same tactic as my South African example, some content is local but most is a duplicate of our Corporate English site. What is the best tactic to not have duplicate content and to get the right sites ranking in the correct local version of Google?

BlueprintMarketing

Excellent answer Kate!

katemorris

This is one of the instances that made me change the way I see the HREFLANG tag. So many people disagree but hear me out.

The HREFLANG tag is only for language differentiation. There are language and country codes because, as you point out, there are many countries that speak the same language and some have some major dialect changes. The biggest example being UK and US English. Therefore, if you have a site developed in US English that you want to "translate" to UK English, but not change the content of the site other than that, you would use HREFLANG tags to note the difference in the pages to Google. Since you changed nothing else (no currency changes, no legal changes, no product set changes), there is no reason for country targeting. You are just translating the same content ... aka changing a few words.

Now, let's say that you are operating a site that has a geo-targeted section to South Africa. Depending on the setup, you might not need HREFLANG tags at all. If you are changing the content other than through translation to target South Africa, that is geo-targeting. Targeting the country.

You can do both geo-target AND change language settings. For instance, if you are a Canadian company that legally has to have all of it's content in Canadian French (fr-ca) and Canadian English (en-ca), you would use HREFLANG between those two. But then you decide to move into the US. You might create a subfolder, subdomain, or ccTLD specific to the US market since you can't offer all of your products or services over there due to regulations. You would geo-target the new section/site to the United States, but not use HREFLANG since the content is targeted at a different country. You would want to make sure the content changed enough and the Canadian English pages might rank for a while but over time the US site/section would get stronger.

I hope that all makes sense.

In your instance where you have geo-targeted, I assume that is for a reason. However, because you have geo-targeted that section to South Africa, you cannot geo-target it to the Congo as well. You would either need to great a section for the Congo and geo-target that, or, if geo-targeting isn't really needed, use one big site and country specific translations. Only do this if your content is the same across the board and you are changing some of the wording to local dialects.

If you want to know more, check out my international search tool that might help you find what structure you should have: http://www.katemorris.com/issg/

BlueprintMarketing

What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries?

the only way to target everyone Speaking the language on the one URL is telling Google Webmaster tools not to specify a location or geo-target.

I do not know if that is the best method for you but if you just want to target English with one subfolder and have multiple countries you would take that away if you geo-targeted it to a country.

May be the best ways to handle it is multiple subfolders I wish I had a better answer for you but if you want to use one sub folder it would be to not target and to use an IP address from a server inside the country you wish to target the most.

e.g

All you have to do is list the alternative version of the pages and have the x default at the bottom. For example, this is what you would do for the English Canadian version:

Specific regions in countries can be done the same way you would do something in Canada.

the other method would be to pick the countries with additional subfolders.

you can target the same language in multiple countries by not adding to the additional information

Canada for instance let's say you did not want to target French and you wanted to target the United States as well

with one subfolder it could not be done. If you set it up to something like this I know that's one subfolder and one domain

SimonByrneIFS

Why would I target the main domain to a country that I have a subfolder for? My question is based on targeting one site (that is already set up via a subfolder) with the same language to multiple countries. What is the preferred way to indicate to Google that one site(or subfolder in this case) is targeted to the same language in multiple countries? Is this possible?

It may help to understand that my site is set up with multiple subfolders that target countries or regions. Some sites are translated and have local content for a specific country or region and other sites are in English but have content specific to that local country or region. I am worried about the sites that are in English but should be targeted to a specific region or country.