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Expanding your site to new languages or country-based language variations

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Maile Ohye

Developer Programs Tech Lead

Google

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Agenda

• Search issues with international sites
• Background questions before you start
• Use cases
• Signals to help Google understand your international site

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://www.example.com” />

• Best practices

Potential search issues

• Searchers of a particular language/region aren't shown a URL tailored to them when one exists

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Searching on google.co.uk

What if there exists an equivalent URL for google.co.uk searchers? :(

Potential search issues (cont.)

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• Search results might display two very similar URLs from your site, confusing users

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• Search engines might not be aware of all language variations

Self-reflection before you start

Is your team committed to...

• Developing an experience tailored to users of a different region/language?
• Creating, reviewing, maintaining newly written content for different users of your site?
• Supporting customers in a new region and/or language?

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Ranking in one language/country

≠

Automatically ranking in a new language/country

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Use case: Regional variations of the same language

Use case: Full translations (car, coche, auto!)

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rel="alternate" hreflang to help Google understand your site

rel="alternate" hreflang

Several places to explain markup

• On-page markup

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/page.html" />

• HTTP Header

HTTP/1.1 200 OK�Content-Type: text/html�Link: <http://es.example.com/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="es"�Content-Length: 5710�(... rest of HTTP response headers...)

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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• Sitemap with all variations for each URL

<loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc>� <xhtml:link � rel="alternate"� hreflang="en"� href="http://www.example.com/english/"/>� <xhtml:link � rel="alternate"� hreflang="de"� href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"/>

...

• Can submit one Sitemap if all sites are verified

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

• Specify language (en), or both language and region (en-gb)

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<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" />

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<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://en-gb.example.com/" />

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

Without a general language specified (imagine you had no general “en,” only “en-gb” and “en-us”), Google will behave as before we supported the hreflang annotation (i.e., we'll try to choose one of the versions that would be relevant to the user).

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rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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Specify x-default for pages (often homepages) that

• Autoredirect
• Serve dynamic content based on IP
• Act as a language selector (where users choose their preferred language)

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<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://www.example.com/" />

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rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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Potential implementation at the Play store, both homepage and apps vary language based on user's IP

• https://play.google.com/
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.maps

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rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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• For duplicative URLs, such as URLs with sessionIDs
• Include the proper rel=”canonical”

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• On canonical URLs, specify rel=alternate hreflang values to the corresponding canonicals
• No need to list hreflang values on non-canonical URLs

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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Most efficient configuration when dealing with duplicative URLs and rel=”alternate” hreflang

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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Specify all alternates on each page, including the page itself (whether with on-page markup, Sitemaps, or HTTP headers)

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rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

Can be on same or different domain (e.g., www.example.com for "en", maileohye.com for "sp")

• Subdirectory
• www.example.com/en/
• www.example.com/jao
• Subdomain
• en.example.com/
• ja.example.com/
• ccTLD or gTLD
• www.example.com/
• www.example.co.jp/
• Different domains
• www.example.com/en/page.html
• maileohye.com/ja/page.html

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Targeting a specific country (for sites with a gTLD)

Can still use Geographic target feature in Webmaster Tools

• Verified subdomains or subdirectories
• Not to be used for a generic language

rel="alternate" hreflang (cont.)

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May not be treated by other major search engines in the same manner.

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Use case: Country-based variations of the same language

Use case: Full translations

Full translation and country-based variations

Benefit: rel="alternate" hreflang

When implemented correctly, helps search engines like Google consolidate several indexing signals.

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Benefit: Helps discovery of new URLs

Benefit: More targeted URL for searchers

For searchers on google.co.uk

Yay! Appropriate localized URL!

Best practices

Shareable URLs

Each URL should be shareable: URL gives same information regardless of user’s IP or language preference

• It’s fine to autoredirect from x-default URL to language/country specific URLs
• Autoredirecting from one language URL to another language URL may prevent the crawling of all pages
• Dynamically serving different languages on one URL will allow only one language version to be indexed (whichever version was crawled)

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Language and region not as parameter

• Parameters can be overloaded, more difficult for search engines to understand
• ccTLD, gTLD subdirectory, gTLD subdomain is fine

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Use Unicode in URLs when necessary

UTF-8 encoding in the path, filenames, URL parameters:

http://example.ca/fr/vélo-de-montagne.html

becomes

http://example.ca/fr/v%C3%A9lo-de-montagne.html

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Be sure to test that your entire stack (server, database, CMS, etc.) supports UTF-8.

Build your business with your new language users

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Finding users in the new language who can recommend, link, and refer others to your site can help you business gain new customers.

Factor page speed

Architecture must scale to new/more users and network distances.

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More Page Speed tips https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

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"Site performance for webmasters" video

http://goo.gl/kqS2

Power to the user

• Ability to switch a page to their language of choice
• Enjoy a tourist experience (US English speaker purchasing while in Germany)

Reference resources!

Working with multilingual sites

http://goo.gl/Nmgp

Working with multiregional sites

http://goo.gl/Fm0U

rel="alternate" hreflang

http://goo.gl/oxN0a

rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default"

http://goo.gl/WI3EI

Webmaster discussion forum for internationalization

http://goo.gl/T6IB7

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Thanks!

www.google.com/webmasters

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