Making HREFLANG Manageable: Search Marketing Summit (Sydney)
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Hreflang is a convoluted solution to a common problem and scaling it can be a nightmare. Even Google's John Mueller agrees "it's one of the most complex aspects of SEO". Having pioneered Hreflang sitemaps in 2011 the Erudite team have supported over 3,000 clients and tool users to complete their Hreflang projects successfully. In this presentation Nichola goes through implementation types and differences. How to manage and scale solutions. How to benchmark and communicate project success with global teams. Common errors and quirks.
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Making HREFLANG Manageable: Search Marketing Summit (Sydney)
- 2. Gets right URL ranking in the intended Google Index. Particularly common with English language sites for UK, AU, US, CA… Often, oldest/strongest URL ranks instead of localised version. @NICHOLASTOTT
- 4. @NICHOLASTOTT Re-cap the basics. Implementation types. Making HREFLANG manageable. Common mistakes. Error diagnostics.
- 5. HREFLANG TAG @NICHOLASTOTT “en” “en-hk” “hk-en” Can be a language… Or language, plus location… But not the other way around…
- 6. @NICHOLASTOTTSOURCE “x-default” Think of it like the “ELSE” statement at the end of a series of “IFs”
- 7. @NICHOLASTOTT Must Use ISO Formats @NICHOLASTOTT ISO:639-1 ISO:3166-1
- 8. HREFLANG ATTRIBUTE @NICHOLASTOTT <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://example.com/” /> Cyclical Argument
- 9. @NICHOLASTOTT en-us en-gb en-au Cyclical and Self-referential @NICHOLASTOTT
- 10. Orthogonal to other rel attributes – like canonical and next/prev. Will not help you rank higher. Will not transfer PageRank. @NICHOLASTOTT Gets right URL ranking in the intended Google Index.
- 11. @NICHOLASTOTT Re-cap the basics. Implementation types. Making HREFLANG manageable. Common mistakes. Error diagnostics.
- 12. @NICHOLASTOTT On-page/HTML Link Element @NICHOLASTOTT <html> <head> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://example.com/page.html"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-au" href="http://example.com/en-ca/page.html"> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://example.com/en-gb/page.html"> </head> <body>
- 13. Great for small, static URL sets. Most decent CMS have easy-use plugins. @NICHOLASTOTT See: Aleyda Solis Hreflang tag generator if non-developer.
- 14. Scaling and frequent updates can be a PITA, or total no-go. Larger sites - developer queue and global timing issues. @NICHOLASTOTT Why increase latency to your site when other options exist?
- 15. @NICHOLASTOTT XML Sitemaps @NICHOLASTOTT <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" mxmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <url> <loc>http://example.com/page.html</loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://example.com/page.html“ /> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-au" href="http://example.com/en-ca/page.html“ />
- 16. KEEP IT FAST AS LIGHTENING Adds no latency, no more lines of code in the <head> @NICHOLASTOTT
- 17. Can be produced, managed and maintained by SEO team. @NICHOLASTOTT Easy to QA and maintain with Search Console reporting. See: Erudite Hreflang tool to convert your mapped URLs into XML files.
- 18. Scaling and frequent updates can be a PITA. @NICHOLASTOTT Some CMS will not permit non- standard sitemaps.
- 19. @NICHOLASTOTT HTTP Header @NICHOLASTOTT HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/pdf Link: <http://example.com/page.pdf>; rel="alternate";hreflang="x- default", <http://uk.example.com/page.pdf>; rel="alternate";hreflang="en-gb", <http://au.example.com/page.pdf>; rel="alternate";hreflang="en-au"
- 20. Solves the non-HTML problem. @NICHOLASTOTT Adds latency to every request. If HTTPS on HTTP1.1 – even more so.
- 21. @NICHOLASTOTT Re-cap the basics. Implementation types. Making HREFLANG manageable. Common mistakes. Error diagnostics.
- 23. DIAGNOSTICS @NICHOLASTOTT “en” nobody cares about your privacy page… How many “wrong” URLs per index? How many of the “wrong” URLs actually bring traffic?
- 24. DIAGNOSTICS @NICHOLASTOTT “en” nobody cares about your privacy page… Build a picture of the size of the problem Work smart on enterprise implementations 80/20
- 25. SISTRIX BENCHMARK @NICHOLASTOTT “en” URL Visibility Per Mapped URL # of Ranking URLS # of Keywords per Top 10/50
- 26. VISIBILITY WHACK-A-MOLE ONE SITE WILL LOSE! @NICHOLASTOTT
- 27. @NICHOLASTOTT SUCCESS # of “right” URLs indexed Improved engagement metrics Conversion rate
- 28. Crawl all sites/sub-domains/sub- folders @NICHOLASTOTT Map/align URLs by equivalent/ alternate
- 29. @NICHOLASTOTT Something like this… @NICHOLASTOTT en en-gb en-au https://blah.com https://blah.co.uk https://blah.com.au https://blah.com/products https://blah.co.uk/products https://blah.com.au/products https://blah.com/about https://blah.co.uk/about https://blah.com.au/about
- 30. @NICHOLASTOTT SITEMAPS XML requires ASCII. Impacts language Use entity escape URLs for special characters FURTHER READING
- 32. @NICHOLASTOTT Split sitemaps into chunks @NICHOLASTOTT INDEX OF SITEMAPS https://blah.com/hreflang-products.xml https://blah.com/hreflang-blog.xml https://blah.com/hreflang-
- 33. @NICHOLASTOTT BIG SITEMAPS Create key to sitemaps in Gdocs/live document Include filename, folder, contents, # URLs FURTHER READING
- 34. @NICHOLASTOTT Re-cap the basics. Implementation types. Making HREFLANG manageable. Common mistakes. Error diagnostics.
- 35. @NICHOLASTOTT LANGUAGE/ COUNTRY CODES NOT ALWAYS SAME… AT/AT
- 36. Can’t code a ‘region’ e.g. EU – Europe will not work! @NICHOLASTOTT Super-common errors e.g. “UK” instead of “GB” often gets a pass. “SC” The Seychelles not Scandinavia. (Also a region)…
- 37. @NICHOLASTOTT MISUNDERSTANDING PURPOSE Will not help you rank better for “jobs in Spain”. Not what HREFLANG is for…
- 38. @NICHOLASTOTT Re-cap the basics. Implementation types. Making HREFLANG manageable. Escape URLs for non-Latin characters. Common mistakes. Error diagnostics.
- 40. No. 1 ERROR No return tags @NICHOLASTOTT
- 41. If there’s no alternate then there’s no need for HREFLANG… @NICHOLASTOTT Wait until all code detected/sitemaps processed... (false negative) If alternate missing, correct in <head> or re-upload… @NICHOLASTOTT
- 42. Don’t map URLS as alternates if they are noindexed… @NICHOLASTOTT Wait until all code detected/sitemaps processed... (false negative) Also ensure all mapped URLs return a 200. REDIRECTS WILL NOT DO. @NICHOLASTOTT
- 43. No. 2 ERROR Making up codes @NICHOLASTOTT
- 45. @NICHOLASTOTT 1.Sitemaps for complex suites. 2. Split maps into manageable chunks. 3. Set expectations and benchmark before starting. 4. Escape URL for non-Latin 5. Organised, meticulous and well- planned, to succeed with HREFLANG.