Enhance your SEO without getting punished by multiple Languages and repeated Contents

This article is a translation and modification of the original article "Localizing content for better SEO" published in The Ultimate Guide to Web Design.

One of the known issues in the SEO and google is well known in the repetition of content. Google and other search engines penalize sites heavily identical contents. So international sites with multiple versions of the same content can be a challenge.

The Mind Language

In late 2011, Google introduced a new brand called hreflang. This mark or tag can be used to identify content translated into multinational sites and helps search engines distinguish between changes in the language. Allows site administrators not only increase the amount of traffic but also the quality.

A common problem in many multinational sites is the large amount of identical content, for example in the case of versions for England (UK) and United States (U.S.), both countries speak English (with some variations in the language) and as a result, there will be a large number of identical pages. The tag hreflang solves this problem indicated that the sites are identical but are aimed at different audiences. The implementation of this brand ensures users see the U.S. site, not the U.S. and England.

In April 2013 Google added another brand known as x-default hreflang. This brand is oriented to provide a default version if the proposed language does not exist in the previous hreflang headlines.

For example:

<link rel="alternate" href="http://inside-out.xyz/en" hreflang="en-uk" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://inside-out.xyz/en" hreflang="en-us" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://inside-out.xyz/en" hreflang="en-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://inside-out.xyz/" hreflang="x-default" />

Allow users from England, United States and Canada enter site / in and any other language will be assigned a /.

Good Luck!