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Hreflang tags and rewrites

by p206ab
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello,

I have a few websites, sharing same content, but translated into different languages and set up on subdomains.

Example:
domain.com/cars/honda-civic
fr.domain.com/voitures/honda-civic
it.domain.com/auto/honda-civic

Now since it's basically the same content, I would like to establish proper hreflang tags and interlinking, but while these links are called dynamically and due to some technical limitation of my CMS system, I'm having the following issue:

domain.com/cars/honda-civic
has a link to FR language, but the link is
fr.domain.com/cars/honda-civic (which technically doesn't exist - note the category cars),
but when I click on it, I land on the fr.domain.com and link gets rewritten to the correct one,
fr.domain.com/voitures/honda-civic.

So my question is the following, from the SEO perspective, is it OK to have these "non-existent" links which get rewritten to the correct ones on arrival to the landing domain, or should I focus on adjusting the technical part so the links are correct already on original domain.com?

I mean, at the end I get where I wanted to be, it's not a 404 page, but can this redirect / rewrite harm the effort in any way?

Worth to mention that hrelang test returns them as "Unretrievable URL (301 Moved Permanently)".

Thanks for any ideas in advance.
#hreflang #rewrites #tags
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  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Originally Posted by p206ab View Post

    Hello,

    I have a few websites, sharing same content, but translated into different languages and set up on subdomains.

    Example:
    domain.com/cars/honda-civic
    fr.domain.com/voitures/honda-civic
    it.domain.com/auto/honda-civic

    Now since it's basically the same content, I would like to establish proper hreflang tags and interlinking, but while these links are called dynamically and due to some technical limitation of my CMS system, I'm having the following issue:

    domain.com/cars/honda-civic
    has a link to FR language, but the link is
    fr.domain.com/cars/honda-civic (which technically doesn't exist - note the category cars),
    but when I click on it, I land on the fr.domain.com and link gets rewritten to the correct one,
    fr.domain.com/voitures/honda-civic.

    So my question is the following, from the SEO perspective, is it OK to have these "non-existent" links which get rewritten to the correct ones on arrival to the landing domain, or should I focus on adjusting the technical part so the links are correct already on original domain.com?

    I mean, at the end I get where I wanted to be, it's not a 404 page, but can this redirect / rewrite harm the effort in any way?

    Worth to mention that hrelang test returns them as "Unretrievable URL (301 Moved Permanently)".

    Thanks for any ideas in advance.
    So to kinda of put this into a frame of reference, because you are using sub-domains you in essence have 2 separate sites. And this is all fine and dandy.

    So now we are looking at the SEO effect of a redirect. Onpage SEO "rules" if you will, would suggest that a link between 2 sites is going to be as good as the Anchor Text and the words used within the link itself.

    We can only assume the anchor text, or the link itself is the FR and a French flag, so there is no actual gain there. We are then left with the link itself ( /cars/honda-civic ) going to a French language site. because the language used in the words pointing towards the FR language site is not in French - you are in essence removing any possible on page / off page gain you might have.

    Granted it would seen there has been an amount of work sitewide in creating redirects from one page to the next such as ( /cars/honda-civic ) to ( /voitures/honda-civic ).

    I would suggest there is no reason to do this, and the off page gains that could be made by using French language within the links to the French site, and conversely using English language within the link pointed away from the French site to the English site.

    If it were me... and i was in this situation, and I know you are not going to like hearing this, but I would go in and direct link all of these and understand that pairing the language of the link to the site ( French link language to French site - and - English link language to English site ) is going to reap the maximum SEO benefit, and bypass all of the work in the future of creating redirects.

    Hope that Helps!
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    Success is an ACT not an idea
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    • Profile picture of the author p206ab
      It does help, savidge4, thank you for taking your time!
      Actually, redirects require no work from my side, since CMS system rewrites the link automatically on arrival to the subdomain, but I see your point and as I assumed, I should focus on making them correct on the original website and avoid the redirects and rewrites.
      Your assumption of the anchor text was correct, but I realised now that I can adjust that and put title or even category inside those to make them unique and appropriate.

      Thanks again!
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  • Profile picture of the author Ana William
    Thank you for your help! I was looking for a solution to a similiar problem
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