pubcon vegas 2017 you're going to screw up international seo - patrick stox

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#pubcon You’re Going To Screw Up Internationalization Presented by: Patrick Stox @patrickstox Technical SEO - IBM

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Page 1: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

#pubcon

You’re Going To Screw Up Internationalization

Presented by:Patrick Stox @patrickstox

Technical SEO - IBM

Page 2: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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You’ve Got This Right?

Page 3: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Can Anyone Answer This?

Does Bing use the “content-language” meta tag?

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-us">

Page 4: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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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Page 9: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Is this wrong?

Page 10: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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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Page 15: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Is This Wrong?

Page 16: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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You Don’t Have To Use Absolute URLs

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/702080129804189696

Page 17: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Is This Wrong?

Questionable

Page 18: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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.

Page 19: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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.

Page 22: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Things Get Even More Fun

• Millions of pages• Multiple CMS’s• Multiple Infrastructures• Redirects

Page 23: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Wasn’t It Hard Enough?

Page 24: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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.

Page 25: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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.

Page 26: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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?

Page 30: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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>.

Page 34: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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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:

Page 40: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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Check Everything Repeatedly

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Expect Things To Break

Page 42: Pubcon Vegas 2017 You're Going To Screw Up International SEO - Patrick Stox

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You’ll Never Get It Right Manually

Automate tags – middleware connecting systemsAutomated testing

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@patrickstox