#as its absolutely going to be diluted and misinterpreted

[wherenightmaresroost]

lots of thoughts about previous reblog since it's like. if making it into a popularity contest is what gets people to do the good thing, then so be it. the whole point is to get the good thing to happen, regardless of people's intentions.

but on the other hand, once it becomes a popularity contest, people may end up focusing on the popularity side of things and do stuff that don't do much good (or even actively cause harm!)

the fate of anything that becomes popular is to be diluted and twisted and misunderstood. this includes: the audience focusing on the person who got popular, instead of the good thing being done; big capitalism getting in on the trend and selling things in a way that's antithetical to the cause (think junk journal kits and other upcycling kits).

[mackeralsauce]

a very long dive into cuttletavio feat. my personal opinions and viewpoints as someone with an insane fixation on the ship.

hello fellow cuttletavio freaks... since the fandoms been propping up more lately i kind of want to talk about my views on the ship and share them, but the problem is, i'm kind of scared to?

it's not necessarily that i want to be unfriendly/antisocial, but moreso this particular ship has a certain *history* to it (which i won't go into) and so making friends in the community seems scary!

this is going to be a long, long discussion/ramble on my views of the ship (their dynamics, etc.) which i don't really think will be read much but that's okay! i just wanted to put my thoughts out there and see how it goes. the full ramble is under the cut.

I've made a post before on the whole 'compare and contrast' aspect of the characters of Craig Cuttlefish and Octavio Takowasa, and that still applies to my views of them. I think the aspect of coming together despite their differences is important to the core of the ship. It is also important to the themes of Splatoon.

Splatoon- as a series- has a running theme of humanity, its mistakes, and its nature. The inkfish of the series, for all intents and purposes, have inherited the good and bad of humanity. This allows for a very complex view of the characters, especially in focus to the past. However, from what I've seen, it appears a lot of people tend to have a very narrow view of Craig and Octavio. They tend to split them into one of two camps:

Total Good, or Total Evil.

This narrow black-and-white view of the characters ends up bleeding into the ship usually. I tend to see people in the groupings of 'fluffy, wholesome ship' and 'toxic, abusive old man yaoi'. Both of these are somewhat disappointing (though the latter upsets me most, we'll get into why later) and dilute it to such a flat view. I know this is to be expected, since that's how fictional works are oft taken, but it does bother me since I care so deeply about the topic.

I'd say the 'toxic yaoi' view is the worse of the two. Am I saying the characters should always be happy, without angst? Absolutely not! It's perfectly normal for couples to argue and have spats. What I refer to is when the ship is distilled into these mere tropes (often associated with BL writing and such), where they're genuinely abusive, where the 'toxicity' is the main aspect of it. I can't stop anyone from having that perspective on the characters, but it really doesn't befit either of them in the slightest.

In my personal opinion- formed from character analysis and lore research-, they would be a healthy but complex relationship. As people, they are neither good nor bad. They want to be good people, they try, but they make mistakes along the way. These mistakes vary based on their own personal vices and virtues. We'll start with a discussion of that, their ideologies.

Craig Cuttlefish- keeping in mind that the NOA localization sucks balls- is a hopeful man that pursues an ideal of good. He's shown in-canon to care for his family, to be of artistic talent, and to pursue order. Through interviews, he's revealed to have always wished for peace. Based on these, I'd say he's somewhat of a hopeless romantic, with a strong attachment to his moral compass. I'd go as far to associate him with anti-war political beliefs and a certain 70s hippie charm to him.

Octavio Takowasa, on the other hand, is shown to be of a rebellious nature. Boisterous, loud, proud. He's shown in-canon to care for the greater good of his people, and that his allegiance is with chaos. His character tends to be misinterpreted less (from what I've seen), but many still tend to fall for the basic pitfalls of mischaracterization with him. As his kabuto symbolizes he likely leads a Shogunate-type society, we can infer he's of a strong, built mannerism, and likely was born into that militaristic structure. Despite this, I think he pursued peace in spite of his predecessors' rule.

Why does this 'order v. chaos' theme matter? It's because it can reveal their strengths and short-fallings. Craig is bound to his sense of justice, but it can be to a fault. Organized, operational, but would falter if his plans were broken. Octavio is able to go with the flow, ever-changing. He's a beacon of progress yet this also serves to his recklessness. Craig helps to ground Octavio, whilst Octavio helps to lift Craig up. They are, in essence, inseparable.

This DOES lead to arguments and falling-outs, but I do NOT think it would've escalated to that of 'toxicity'. They are mature adults. I don't think what happened at the Siege of Arowana was intentional, nor do I think they had it in them to hurt each other. I don't think they grew 'bitter' towards each other. Any hateful feelings were likely towards the leader of Inkadia's military or nation, towards the ones moving the pawns. It's unlikely Octavio started the war; not without being provoked. With Craig's behaviors, in-canon, I find it unlikely to be his fault.

If I were to go deeper-in with my personal theories, I'd liken that Inkadia as a nation is closest to Western Ideologies (which, does track, the whole haikara vs bankara thing). This is hinted at by mentions of inkling hedonism in pre-war times, which proves still present in the consumerist tendencies of modern Inkopolis. This doesn't mean that *everything* from western nations like the United States translates historically to Inkadia, but we can infer how this influence relates to the war and geopolitical tensions of the pre-war period.

It's already pretty obvious that the Sunken Scrolls are propaganda. From both sides, to be exact. The Octarian propaganda is obvious to us, the player, because we play as inklings in Splatoon 1. However, many people seem to not use the same thinking for the inkling historical sources in the scrolls. Those are likely influenced by propaganda too. This brings me to a topic I like to emphasize quite often (including in my fic... hi Ruse Theory fans!!): history is written by the winners of war.

The sunken scrolls state things like the war was started by rising tides, and that the inklings won due to 'superior number of limbs'. While I think the tides were *partially* true because of the Splatlandian scrolls mentioning a great flood, I don't think thats the whole story. We know the Zapfish are valuable to Inkadia. We also know that Bluefin Depot is a coal mine, Craig did something in Bluefin Depot during the war, and coal is a pollutive source of energy. Zapfish- so far- seem to be more of an efficient source.

Where am I going with this? The war had most likely been a power/resources battle, with the floods a further excuse for suddenness of attacking a previously-allied nation.

This ties into the ship because it clarifies the reasons for the war, and how much control they had in the manner. As far as we know, Craig's lowest rank in the early times of the war was that of Second Lieutenant. He wouldn't have been even close to calling those shots. As for Octavio, the waters are a bit muddied.

Shogunate Governments typically rule temporarily during wartime, but we also never hear of any other form of Octarian rulership. This can be excused with the fact that Splatoon's inkfish don't directly copy human culture. It's likely that the Octarians could have discovered remnants of human culture in the bunkers (pre-war, whilst exploring the continent), and simply emulated some of the elements discovered. In this case, the Octarians would have a Shogun who also serves the role of 'Emperor' as well.

Keeping this in mind, while Octavio serves over a military-type government, I don't think he started the war. Since Octarian tech RELIES on Zapfish, I believe they had claim over most of the Zapfish habitats in Inkadia's landmass. Therefore, we can sort of tie together how things escalate from there.

I think that even during the war, Craig and Octavio were in love. I don't think they ever broke up, neither, since Craig likely assumed the Octarians would take a quick victory. You could also infer some espionage-related activities but that bleeds more into the theoretical so I won't go into that. If there were some kind of separation, Octavio would have declared it out of worry more than distaste.

Keeping this in mind, I really think Craig and Octavio had a genuine love that bared no intention of hurting the other. If Octavio wanted Craig dead, he'd of taken care of that by now, even as old men. He's still very-much capable. Craig could have likely done the same, too, as he's shown to be resilient even in old age. There is a tragicness to the circumstances of their environment but they love all the same through it all.

What does this all mean? Craig and Octavio had a beautiful, brilliant love, stifled due to a war declared out of their hands. They loved so truly and openly, and planned on things to go smooth after a quick win. Unfortunately, the tables turned, and they got the wrong end of the stick. A life imagined of beautiful intimacy together, only for reality to crash in with that of isolation eating away at their hearts.

Going into personal theories some more, I don't think Craig stopped fighting for Octavio. He's left in such a poor state in Splatoon 1 for that of a 'recognized hero' in war. It could be an element of veteran mistreatment, and it could also be that he tried to speak up post-war of the unrighteous terms it'd been started upon. It could be he'd been stripped of any benefit due to his political views. I think Octavio resorted to stealing the Zapfish because he knew Craig's attempts would never bring about change, and that he'd been punished for trying. Craig wanted to stop him from stealing the Zapfish because he feared repercussions for his lover. I'm rambling on and its getting all sappy and I may cry now--

uhhh all this to say, cuttletavio more deep than basic tropes of 'toxic yaoi' etc etc. thank u for coming to my ted talk.... feel free to contribute to the convo in the reblogs or comments....

[pillatedcompills]

people don't like skinny narrator designs not inherently because they are skinny, but because majority of them are skinny in tangent with the notion of attractiveness. that's not to say that you can't have preferences, but you're willingly turning a blind eye if you say skinny and fat are regarded equally as they most certainly aren't. not in online or real world spaces under western standards.

it's not their skinniness that makes them bad- it's the way their designs attribute their skinniness as a primary characteristic to market how 'hot' they are. and don't be daft now, there's a handful of popular designs that employ poses, clothes, situations, and more on a regular basis that are all commonly associated with beauty, romantic notions, and such. can you blame one person in particular? not exactly, but it's the combination of a few things that i think causes this divide in narrator design 'discourse'. the quantity of conventionally attractive narrators paired with the way they are drawn 90% of the time in romantic or 'more' situations, in addition to the vitriol of followers of these designs. it gets tiring. to be honest, i'm probably being nice about all this. at the end of the day, skinny people get treated better than fat people and sometimes it's fucking tiring. sometimes you just want better and have to express that when every which way you look it's shit like "lovebug" and deeply misinterpreted and diluted readings of the characters and source material themselves, which, there is something to say against when that appears to be majority of a fandom's populace. especially considering the absolute irony of all this for a game like the stanley parable, mind you.

i could go on since i don't believe i explained everything there is to this nor in enough detail, but i'm toiling on now. i also don't believe this is the absolute 100% truth, just my own POV and one i know others affected share.

I can understand where you are coming from. I'm a fat person myself, and I'm heavily aware that fat people are treated like absolute shit. What I meant was it's annoying when people complain over stupid things for no reason. In no way am I trying to dismiss fatphobia, or anything like that. I can see both sides of this situation, but I believe you took my post completely wrong. The point was that I'm tired of seeing people argue and fight with kids over a fiction characters design. The problem is when grown adults are going out of their way to bully young teens for having a character design. In no way was I trying to say that you shouldn't design a character in a certain way, what I was trying to say was it annoying seeing kids and adults going back in forth over something as stupid as a character design.

In no way was I trying to pretend like people weren't being hated for not making the Narrator thin, the argument can go both ways. It's just the argument I was proposing is more an apparent argument. I haven't been in this fandom long, for only 3 months as of now, I'm still new. But from what I've seen its nothing but people arguing about the most petty shit. I hate that people get hate for their narrator designs regardless, that's the point of the post.

[flagellant]

Putting this on anon, because I'm pretty sure this is an opinion that might upset people, but it's still relevant to the discussion you're currently having/stuck in.

I, personally, don't believe you CAN appropriate Japanese culture, for the same reason I don't believe you can appropriate American, British, Russian, or Chinese (Beijin central official government) culture.

Because these are imperialist powers who have literally murdered and waged war to FORCE people to adopt their culture. I feel like once a group walks up, says "You will adopt this culture or WE WILL KILL YOU," everyone is allowed to do whatever the fuck they want with it.

Now, I love Japan, I love Japanese culture and artwork, and yes, anime, but I think that anyone who high on the bandwagon of "Oh, you can't do that, that's ApPrOpRiAtIoN of the Japanese culture, needs to read some fucking Japanese history. Ideally stuff written by the Japanese.

The people worried about appropriation of Japanese culture are the same ones who dog-piled on a designer for making a Kimono in an Clan Tartan (she was half Japanese, half Scottish) because they were CERTAIN she was a non-Japanese """Appropriating""" Japanese culture.

Also, I follow all the Japanese official government twitters, and about once every other week they just tweet out a whole slew of "Come join us at such and such, learn about traditional Japanese culture! Come participate in our festivals! We really, REALLY want everyone to come be part of our cultural heritage! We'll send you free books on the subject!"

Closing clarification. I absolutely believe that Cultural Appropriation is a real thing, it is a real problem. Especially when dealing with smaller cultural groups that have been suppressed in the past, one must tread with care and the utmost respect. I very specifically have worked to remove terms taken from certain cultures from my common usage and vocabulary because people from those cultures have asked. Spirit Animal, Golem, (The cannibal spirit repeated referenced in Hannibal), these are terms that have important cultural significance, and diluting and misusing them is wrong.

But, again, if a major historical factor in a culture is "We are literally going to murder you and your family if you DON'T adopt our culture," I think you lose pretty much all right to claim/complain about appropriation of your culture.

Okay so you do realize that the reason the Japanese official government twitter posts "Come learn about all these traditional cultural and historical things" is because they want people to learn about Japanese culture so that they DON'T continue appropriating it, yes?

All I'm going to tell you is you seriously need to remind yourself what, exactly, cultural appropriation is. It doesn't just mean feeling entitled to a closed culture's practices. It means the theft and misinterpretation of a culture due to a lack of knowledge and respect for that culture within its own context. Wearing a kimono as someone who isn't Japanese isn't appropriative. Dressing as a geisha for Halloween is appropriative. A foreigner seeking to become a geisha isn't appropriative; Memoirs of a Geisha is appropriative.

I am trying to say this in the most well-intentioned way I can, and I hope you understand it as such: The reason you think this opinion will upset people is because it's an opinion which literally any fucking East Asian person would see and go "What the actual living fuck is this bullshit." If you are as invested in respecting these cultures and in not perpetrating racist and dismissive attitudes towards its people as you claim, I would really suggest you need to do a better job and actually find fucking someone, anyone, who is East Asian, because the concept of "It's impossible to appropriate Japanese (and by extension of your definition Chinese) culture" is literally why the term cultural appropriation exists in the first place.

[pluralterhuman]

also like. side note.

diagnoses are words for clusters of symptoms. if you don't fit the symptom cluster, you don't get the diagnosis.

and you will be undiagnosed. please never rely on a disorder being "lifelong" to keep your diagnosis longterm, even if you genuinely still experience the symptoms. my girlfriend was undiagnosed with autism because she doesn't fit the DSM criteria anymore (for autism specifically the DSM criteria are incredibly flawed and inaccurate, however) and it's a massive battle to try to get someone to re-assess her and rediagnose her.

for the vast majority of disorders, going by American standard psychiatric practice, if you don't experience the symptom cluster, you're going to lose your diagnosis at some point.

and whether or not this is an accurate thing to do is debatable in every case--look, the best kept secret of psychiatry is that the DSM isn't a holy grail of objective information. it's an encoded set of categories of clusters of behavior patterns and symptoms written by a few hand-picked people (who are generally white cis men, with few exceptions) and thus subject to their biases, perspectives, and internalized ~isms.

the criteria for dxing autism are racist and misogynistic, the criteria for dxing BPD are misogynistic in a different way. the DSM lists DID and OSDD as disorders only because high-level policy prevented the task force from removing them entirely; the person who wrote those criteria wrote them with the intention to define the disorders out of existence as he believed the symptoms being described were entirely faked by therapists and patients. it's regularly debated as to whether or not ADHD even exists as its own disparate category from atypical presentations of autism because the diagnoses are so comorbid and the physical structure of those brains are so similar.

like... this isn't STEM. this is a group of privileged people debating and categorizing human behavior in ways that are inherently flawed. it might be the best we have, but it is absolutely flawed. the best way to describe a diagnosis as it exists under the current DSM in American psychiatric practice is, again, a flawed description of a cluster of symptoms. these diagnoses may overlap and may be diagnosed differently depending on the psychiatrist you see. (even pharmapsychology isn't an exact science, and people with the exact same symptom clusters might respond entirely differently to the same meds, as i've learned during my psychiatric journey. sometimes this doesn't even affect the diagnosis!)

so like... at the end of the day, don't rely on someone on the internet saying something is a lifelong disorder or "based on brain structure" to keep your diagnosis. that's genuinely not how American psychiatry functions, and the chances that it's true are honestly pretty low--usually it's based in pop science articles that dilute and simplify the findings of a single study. psychiatry is incredibly complicated and difficult to understand even as a researcher, and we don't usually find things like "we can diagnose BPD through a brain scan now," those are usually someone misinterpreting a much more complicated finding (similar to how those popsci articles about "brain sex" are incorrect and thankfully debunked in trans spaces as far as i've seen). if you no longer fit a symptom cluster, and you want to keep your diagnosis, you should be prepared to have it removed from your paperwork (often without your knowledge) and have to fight pretty damn hard for it.

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

The world is getting better and better

Here is Something I wrote on September 16th, 2015. REPOST.

By STEPHEN JAY MORRIS

©Scientific Morality

If you know basic Physics, you’d know that a positive charged particle attracts a negative charged particle. A negatively charged particle can be reduced to a constant velocity, opposed to an accelerated motion. In more simplistic terms “Opposites Attract”. In Philosophical terms: Positive overshadows the Negative. Religion, most particularly “Christianity” is reliant on Negativity. Bible Prophesy predicts the world’s calamitous end. Christians will search for any minute evidence of the fulfillment of Bible Prophecy. If you hear someone who bemoans how the U.S.A is getting worse and worse, chances are he/she are some types of Fundamentalist Christian.

           As population increases in North America, so does crime. Statically, crime is decreasing. Just do the math. You might want to engage in comparative percentages. For example, if 10% of the population is criminals in the last century, quantitatively it negates the percentile. Notwithstanding an increase in population, the percentage usually remains the same. So, henceforth, 7% percent of the populations are criminal here in the 21-century. There is less crime in America than there ever has been in its history.

           The problem is the over-saturation of media. With the advent of advancement of communication Technology, there is a sense of overwhelming pandemonium. In the last century, if someone commits a crime, it wouldn’t be reported until a week later. Now, it’s instantaneous. If a 10-year-old boy robs a store at 10 o’clock, at 10:15, the whole world knows about it. People get overwhelmed by all the Negativity from the news media. Their safety zone is being infringed. Insecurity flourishes among the denizens. It never occurs to some people that Negativity sells. Sensationalism brings in advertising revenue. Hyperbole clouds objective truth. The media wants you to be compelled to their programs, so they exaggerate the truth. It’s all a synthetic illusion. Just go look out your window, go ahead, I’ll wait. Dum, da, dum, da,dee, dum. Back? What did you see? Bedlam? A massacre? No? You may have seen a Cat sauntering on the sidewalk. I doubt you saw any murder, rape or any other mayhem. If you did, go call a cop.  The World is fine. Do not believe the news media or Bible thumping fear mongers.

             What we are witnessing now, is the last gasp of primitive thinking, Human superstitions, belief in Gods or God, tribalism and Egotism. All the Humans frailties are still with us. But it’s starting to erode. You see, fear is nourishment for profiteers and the advocates of Supernatural folly. And why should there be a fear of God? Will this guaranteed Morality? Shouldn’t Morality be voluntary, even though it’s expected? Or should it be induced by the fear of retribution?  Which is nobler? Fear gives a self-hating asshole sadistic pleasure. He & she wants to bring the world to their lowly level. Evil is sometimes caused by someone else’s misinterpretation of good. Evil can be absolute and sometimes relative. It is wrong to steal that is Absolute. Stealing food to feed your starving family, that is relative.

       In conclusion: Humans has made strides in Medicine, Technology, Science, and yes…MORALITY!!!!   Humans are getting more intelligent and Moral. Illiteracy is diminishing. Poverty is getting more attention, so is the Environment. We are finding cures for diseases. If you should have a bad Liver, they’ll clone a new one for you. The world is getting better and better. Some people want the world to die because their world is dead. Folks like me, want the World to live and prosper. What do you want? To feel good all the time or live life in its honest itineration. If you think life is just a matter of pain and pleasure, you are missing the point. I’m not preaching some diluted Optimism here, what I’m talking about is: TRUTH!!  That’s all.

[the-things-and-other-things]

The Hall of Lives

Chp.1- 

How Does One Journey To A Distant Land Without Knowing Why One Did That?

The Hall of Lives. The Magnificent Place. The liveliest place on the face of the world despite being mostly occupied by the dead. It’s not that no one had ever been here while they were alive, it’s just that the only living eyes that had ever seen the place were those of its builders.

It was made of the single least dilutable form of magic- one that has been around for millenia. One that has helped the lives it hosts within the hall’s boundaries live.

Art. 

Making for the sake of making. Art for the sake of art, no work of which can ever be fully erased out of the Hall. That is what made the Hall what it is. 

Ekrie was barely eight when they had noticed that what they made had small effects on whatever was around them. It did not seem to matter how they made them or how well they made them, all that mattered was that they had intended to make them.

The shabby drawing of a tree on paper began to smell of the forest. A written story changed the paper it was written on. A piece of music provoked a response from everything around it, living or otherwise.

No one around seemed to notice these changes. Sure they were small, but to call them imperceptible…. 

Either way, Ekrie managed to blend in, half believing that the others acknowledged them in a way unknown to them. Speaking of things they didn’t know usually brought about ridicule…

That, of course, lasted only so long. 

Ekrie found their reasoning untrue when their age was twelve and their mother found a literal miniature tornado dancing across their hair when all they’d done was drawn wind in the sand.

‘What is that?’

They knew in theory what the answer should be but testing their theories rarely ended great. But when it comes to mum, any answer is better than no answer. So they chose the usual answer. The one that produced the least damaging results.

‘I don’t know.’

No one knew nor tried to know what that meant. Which was fair. No one really knew that it meant more than an ‘I don’t know’ and Ekrie didn’t know how to convey that without risking misinterpretation- the only reason they resort to that answer.

The tornado was discussed over dinner that day, with Ekrie quiet through the conversation, speaking only when they absolutely needed to. But it wasn’t enough. It never was.

‘Why don’t you talk a bit more?’

‘I don’t want to hear that from you again. Explain it clearly.’

‘Don’t just sit there. Talk to us.’

It didn’t matter that Ekrie didn’t know how to explain. It didn’t matter that they didn’t have the words to explain it with. It didn’t matter that in that moment any words out of their mouth would only be what they wanted to hear. And it did not matter that all they wanted to do was retreat until the storm blew over.

They knew their parents didn’t mean any harm, but it was overwhelming nonetheless. Besides, they couldn’t exactly explain why they couldn’t explain.

This usually only ended when mum got what she thought was enough or when she gave up on trying. Today it was the latter.

The oddities kept occurring. Only guarded so that no one else could see them happen. Ekrie was used to hiding things they didn’t know the cause for. All they could do, or maybe thought that they could do, was hold on for another day. They knew mum didn’t mean to overwhelm them, she just didn’t know it overwhelmed them.

Everyone knew about the hall of lives. It just was a thing everyone believed existed. When you died on the Night of Loss, you supposedly made a journey there. Inside, supposedly, were the best creations made by humanity. And many a man has debated over what can be found there. Some have tried to find it while they were alive. Those people have never returned.

Tonight, as all nights, the Hall was not a quiet place. The dead milled around the place. Some looked up at the night sky in silence. Some were trying to find their pens. Some were just looking around talking to the people they come across or meeting old friends.

And tonight, as all nights before it, but not all nights after, the hall will remain peaceful.

Monday morning, six years later. Another week’s beginning. Ekrie has been up for an hour now, carving a silent valley into a sheet of foam. No one else was awake.

Of course, they could have been using pen and paper. They knew that. The choice to use foam instead was one made on impulse. An impulse they had neither reason nor answer for.

Near the piece’s conclusion, a strange silence took over the house, broken only by the clock telling the time. It was time the family woke up. Ekrie took another look at the foam. They did not dislike it right now, but they knew the critique would come sooner or later. For now, they put it away and woke everyone else.

The buzzing silence they had created could be felt through the noise of the morning.

Writing wasn’t hard. It was just tiring. And barely readable. But that was just the part where they physically wrote. And Ekrie loved making stories. So when they actually felt the desire to write it down, the consequences were colossal. 

And that was what happened on their fourteenth birthday.

It turned the paper black as glowing red ink surfaced on top. The tabletop started turning inky black.

They had noticed the strangeness before. It was not something anyone they had known for long enough let slip under their radar. Some ridiculed it and some were in awe. Some had seen them on their own and had experienced the same responses.

‘Peaceful’ in the Hall meant a lot of wildly different things. It was without conflict for some, respect for all for others, and for yet others it was the unnecessity of conflict. You couldn’t entirely disagree with any of them. 

In the Hall there was no one excluded. There was no reason to. If you did not cause any intentional harm, it did not matter how much you were disregarded, mistrusted, considered harmful or naive, you would find a place in the Hall.

Tonight was the Night of Loss. People across Cross will either find the Hall tonight. In short, they will die. People who suffered fatal injuries were still alive and in pain until this night, which is now the only time that those around them will know whether they will leave their side. Fate was cruel that way.

The people in pain from such wounds are usually given Rainberries, which stopped the pain, but also guaranteed death. Therefore , they are given only after there is no hope of survival left.

That was the night Ekrie turned fourteen. And that was the night they died.

Ekrie heard the clock strike three before collapsing. The night air had been full of grief. Sleeping had never been easy for them on this night. Every year for the last decade, they had been chided for not sleeping. Go to sleep early- that’s what they’d been told every time. Well, Ekrie would if they could. 

They might as well try to get some shut eye today. With their eyes closed, they could hear the slightest breeze of wind outside the window, the grass that should have been too quiet to hear from within, the slight creak of the neighbours’ stairs. The slow gurgling of the stream fifty yards away was too much for their brain.

So, they began singing softly. Because in this place, where no one who could have heard them was awake, they could do so without judgement.

“The voices that drift through the ground

They find the Hall and look around

The beautiful works of their family

Are there ,right there, for them all to see

The graceful words to the knife like ones

They could see them all and then make some... 

By the time the clock struck four, they were drifting away to the Hall of Lives.

Ekrie woke up in the middle of a vast field. There were a few other people standing around. Some, like them, had just got up. Where-

The ground beneath them melted away and spewed them into a vast… hall. The floor was carved with the letters naming the place.

The Hall Of Lives

They… were dead?

How? They couldn’t be. They didn’t know how…

The numerous doors littering the walls of the hall burst open. A voice carried through all the doors at once and rippled into the hall.

“Welcome, to all the new Losses.”

[thesinglesjukebox]

TAYLOR SWIFT - YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN

[3.65]

The one that's on our mind, 365, all the time...

Will Rivitz: The Singles Jukebox -- Corrections, June 21 2019: The author of this blurb has previously stated that the selection of Meghan Trainor as LA Pride headliner would forever be the nadir of Pride-related programming. The author regrets the error. [1]

Joshua Copperman: The discourse for "ME!": "What does this mean for Taylor's next era?" The discourse for this lyrical clusterfuck: "What does this mean at all?" It's a much more interesting production, without stock horns and with some nice "Royals"-y vocal layering, but it's the most incoherent thing she's ever released. Is it about stans? Is it about homophobes? Is it a coming out song? Did Taylor throw the first shade at Stonewall? What is HAPPENING?? I'm sorry, I need to calm down. [3]

Will Adams: Taylor said "Gay Rights!" Kind of! Sort of. Well... it's complicated. Not necessarily because of her status as a cis straight woman, but because the message itself is so damn muddled. Stans and trolls and bigots and music journalists are lumped in the same mass of "haters," and while it's worth noting that this by no means the first anti-haters pop song to exist, the overt political text here results in lots of crossed wires. The song suffers as a result too, throwing half-formed catchphrases at the wall to see what sticks: the chorus is a melodic void (odd considering Taylor's songwriting strength); the "gowns" reference is too subtle to register; the patter results in odd scansion throughout ("like it's PUH-trón"); and "snakes and stones never broke my bones" is no more clever than "don't need opinions from a shellfish or a sheep." Speaking of Katy, also wrapped up in all this is a resolution of a beef that never seemed that important except as something for either party to mine for big single launches. It's all too much, especially for a not-bad track that fizzes just fine on its own. It'd be churlish to ask Taylor to take her own advice; for now all I ask for is coherence. [4]

Jonathan Bradley: Taylor Swift has always had a talent for deploying sharp and piquant phrases, the sorts of lyrics that tell blunt little stories like animated gifs. It's an opportunity for her to go broad and get funny: "Some indie record that's much cooler than mine," for instance, or "I can make the bad guys good for a weekend," or "I don't love the drama, it loves me." "You Need to Calm Down" is like an entire song built from these lines, and it whirls by like a Twitter thread or an Instagram story. Taylor sass is a lot of fun, and many of these ripostes are satisfyingly catty in their insouciance ("I'm just like, 'hey... are you OK?'" might be the best of these). Swift has shrugged off detractors on "Shake It Off" and "Mean," but she is more single-minded this time, and that focus paradoxically dilutes the intent. Swift's greatest strength as a songwriter is her interiority; she's adept at examining and interpreting her own feelings. But a consequence of that is that she is far less certain when she needs to step outside the bounds of her own head. The worst song she has ever released was a charity single called "Ronan," in which Swift sung in the voice of a mother who had lost her child to cancer; so talented at realizing her personal traumas, she proved incapable of reconstructing her sympathy for that bereavement in her own voice. "Calm Down" has some things to say about homophobia, and in this terrain outside her own experience, Swift's words are not so much unpleasant as awkward and a bit superficial, particularly in their uncertain invocation of "shade" as bigotry. (If stan theorists needed evidence that Swift is indeed as straight as she publicly presents, it's here: a queer Taylor would not have written a second verse as disengaged as that one.) But even diluted, Swift singles are still constructed tight. This one continues finding the pastel inversion of Reputation's skeletal synth sound, and echoes "ME!" with a hook of vowel sounds as palilalia -- "oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh..." this time, rather than "me-hee-hee." It's a tic that works -- in moderation. [7]

Alex Clifton: (Puts on music critic hat) It's stronger than "ME!" (which isn't hard but worth noting), I'm glad she takes swipes at homophobia but equating that with personal shots is a little bit weird, it's super catchy but the lyrics are still a little lacking, and I still can't remember all the words even though I have the melody memorized. (Takes off music critic hat, puts on bisexual Swiftie stan hat) EVERYTHING IS RAINBOWS AND MY BRAIN WON'T STOP SINGING THIS AND I WOULD MARRY TAYLOR SWIFT, HAPPY PRIDE!!!!! [5]

Alfred Soto: I'm sure it will sound fine on the radio, especially played beside "Bad Guy" and "Old Town Road." The maximalist intentions behind the Everest-sized synth bass and her rat-tat-tat delivery bespeak a mind that recognizes it's the one needing calm. Except for the "parade" line, I wouldn't have known this alludes to Pride if I hadn't watched the video. I don't feel pandered to as a queer man because, after all, a Pride parade is superficial performativity anyway. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: Give her this: the stacked-up arpeggio in the chorus is an absolutely brilliant hook, particularly the second time when it goes over the top. The rapid-fire prechorus is pretty good too. But the beat is the same freezer-burned "Paper Planes"/"With Ur Love"/"Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" chill, the accents are so far from the right syllables they've filed a misSING perSONS REport, the conflating of trolls with professional critics with the literal Westboro Baptist Church is bad (as is the weird class shit in the video, as if you can't be anti-gay and present like a Pleasantville star), and all this was done much better on "Mean." [5]

Katie Gill: In a way, this song is hellishly brilliant. Taylor Swift has provided her standom with a weapon, something that they can wield against any form of criticism. Want to write an article criticizing the fact that Swift seems to put "homophobia" and "me having internet bullies" on the same level, the fact that the video tactlessly paints rural Americana as the enemy of LGBTQ+ people instead of the Mike Pences of the world, or the fact that the second verse leans way too close to the sort of tactlessness that only aggressively woke allies can pull off? Expect a flock of Twitter replies telling you condescendingly that "you need to calm down" and "you're being too loud," as people ignore the half-assed condemnation of standom during the song's third verse in favor of using Swift's lyrics as a cudgel against any perceived haters. For all that Swift is trying to shed the sneaky snake image, traces of it still linger between the lines. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The people who said "Heartbeats" by The Knife was the future of music were right in 2003, and based on this, have now been right for 16 years and counting. That enormous synth-bass takes a song that should have been awful on paper (ugh, a thematic sequel to "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," which itself is why we can't have nice things, like good Taylor Swift songs), with the second verse featuring the worst lyrics Swift has ever written, and makes it frisky and playful. The "uh-oh uh-oh UH-OH!" hook is legitimately her best in years. Obsessing about someone is tedious, obsessing about those people is even more tedious, but for once, Swift sounds like she's legitimately above it, even if I don't think she knows what "shade" is. I wanted to hate this for its posturing, but I can't, because of the "uh-oh" bit. But just between you and me, I liked Katy Perry's last single more. [6]

William John: I'm always happy to hear songs that approximate the "Heartbeats" melody, and the layered vocals here sound lovely, but Dorian Corey didn't keep a mummy in her house for fifteen years for "shade" to be misinterpreted so flagrantly. [3]

Danilo Bortoli: Is it fair to demand political accountability from artists? The question remains thorny these days, but when Taylor Swift blatantly goes after pink money, the answer is yes, loud and clear. The case made for "You Need To Calm Down" has pulled the identity politics card (as usual, The Onion put it better). That is, Swift's song oversimplifies an ancient struggle for recognition, making up a narrative that isn't Taylor's to call her own. But what is more infuriating is the sugarcoating: the fact that pride should come only from within, and the naive and painful suggestion that a homophobe would go silent after a line as awful as "shade never made anybody less gay". That is to say, when it comes to protest, I prefer it the French way. Which is why all of this begs the question: Would you tell Richard Spencer to "calm down"? No, of course you wouldn't. [2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There are probably 2300 words elsewhere in this post about the politics and rhetoric of Taylor's words here (and I'll get to that), but first I feel obligated to talk about how "You Need To Calm Down" works on a purely musical level. It sounds like ass. It takes the bag of tricks that Swift used on "Ready For It?," the most musically captivating of Reputation's singles, and sands off all of their weird edges. Yes, there's a bass thump to welcome you in, but without the distortion it just sounds like Taylor's doing "Royals"-lite (I mean, Joel Little did produce.) And with the fangs off the verse, the lift to the chorus fails to land. It's all just sound, an undifferentiated, imperial wave of midtempo banger signifier without a real hook. Even Swift's vocals, which have always been her most compelling tool, can't sell the song's vibe -- she's confused not giving a fuck for calm. Of course, it's not entirely clear what "You Need To Calm Down"'s vibe, or point, even is. It's trying to be clever, with its winking references to stale LGBTQ and feminist symbology, but by conflating (or at least juxtaposing) those struggles with the problems that Taylor Swift has as a widely hated famous person, it ends up saying nothing at all. In the end, "You Need To Calm Down" is less a coherent song in itself than a Potemkin village to situate endless thinkpieces in. Make it stop. [3]

Ashley Bardhan: I know the title is "You Need To Calm Down" but there are no human words that can aptly describe how much I hate this song. Think of a young pigeon cooing as it flies through a fish market, weaving over and through the glistening crates of silver-scaled fish and ice. Oh no! There's a problem with a shipment! The owner angrily tosses a fat fish into the air, and its scales glint as it smacks the pigeon mid-air and onto the ground with the full brunt of its weight. The pigeon sees the fish market, its final flight, behind its closed eyes in a hurried blur. It weakly wheezes its final birdsong, and then... nothing. Yaaas, hunty. [0]

Iris Xie: 🤷 This is so tired, I can't even be that mad about it. The only question I have, because this song and MV isn't even worth a QTPOC-centered thinkpiece from me is this: when is the Post Malone + Swae Lee + Taylor Swift collaboration happening? This sounds so much like "Sunflower" and is just as deadening. Even the excitement of one of my besties sending me an ~*urgent*~ text message about Katy Perry and Taylor Swift making up over their imaginary feud, once they realized it hurt both of their fanbases, can't even ignite an ounce of care from me. (Bless your heart, my dear friend.) If she really wanted to pander to the gays, she could've just written a sequel to "Look What You Made Me Do" and become a slicker conduit for the less graceful parts about being in queer scenes, which can be about petty, messy drama, rather than being the subject of rage and apathy about being another harbinger of happy happy HAPPY gaypropriation. Like, whatever, she can have her extremely meaningless self-declared ally medal. I've been calm, just give me actual music. [2]

Isabel Cole: It's like this: A while ago I was catching up with an ex who mentioned he'd recently come back into contact with someone we'd known in high school -- acquaintance of his, frenemy of mine, a few sparkling months of giggling BFF-ship deteriorating across a year I spent defending her while she shit-talked my fashion sense in the girls' room to the local blabbermouth -- and he told me, with an ironic arch of the brow, that when my name had inevitably come up she'd said, "Isabel and I used to be so close; I wonder what happened." Reader, I spent like a week losing my mind, repeating the story and relitigating the history to anyone who would listen while bitterly making fun of her internet presence. Was this because I am petty and emotionally volatile? Yes. But it was also because there is a certain level of willful detachment from reality which I do not have the cognitive capacity to process adequately. Taylor Swift having the gall to tell any human on earth to calm down makes me feel insane the way it makes me feel insane to see someone citing as evidence of their incurable adolescent unpopularity the dorky AIM screenname they picked based on an affectionate joke I made. Taylor Swift saying "take several seats" makes me feel the same combination of spiteful and enraged as reading a line recycled from Livejournal in 2005: please learn like everyone else to disguise the extent to which the human brain is a machine wired to seek validation, the transparency of your desperation is making all of us uncomfortable! God, I wanna snub her in a lunchroom so bad. The song is unappealing in ways that barely merit mentioning -- verses that sound like they were reverse-engineered from a MIDI file of the superior but hardly sublime "Gorgeous," chorus that throws in the plodding piano of roaring bravery -- but even beyond the equivalency it implies between Twitter making fun of her and, like, hate crimes, I find the bridge particularly embarrassing, because of how artlessly it reveals its origin: Taylor Swift literally read a Tumblr post (or, the algorithm we call Taylor Swift processed several hundred Tumblr posts) from 2011 saying "stop pitting female artists against each other [handclap emoji etc.]!!!!!!!!!!!" and thought, Wow! Feminism! As for the possibility that this is another masterful turn from Taylor the troll (or troll!Taylor as there is a distressingly high chance she'd say) and by falling for it I've let her win: (1) Taylor Swift is always already winning, this is exactly what Marx was talking about (2) Let me kick it back to my ex one more time: when I asked what she was like these days, he considered and said: "I thought she'd developed self-awareness, but then I realized it was just self-identification." Yeah. [1]

Scott Mildenhall: You know sometimes, when you read the annotations on genius.com, how their deductions and inferences appear to have been made by algorithm? For instance, the notion that this being released on that loud American guy's birthday "seems to support the theory" that one line is about him? This is what would happen if that algorithm was tasked with writing a satirical song. [5]

Stephen Eisermann: My take? This is more lazy allyship than commercialization of pride. Plus, it's kind of a bop. Sucks, then, that Taylor completely misunderstands what shade is -- but did we really expect any better? [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[jarvisrebecca93]

What Can I Do For My Tmj Stunning Useful Ideas

Some allergic reactions to something you like.It varies how painful and immobilizing to everyday life but you need to relieve the pain actually increases the urge to grind their teeth.Pain management and related counseling can be a cause of Bruxism you could possibly be having a jaw joint discomfort, pain and discomfort over time.Long-term management intends to stop bruxism using some of the other symptoms for TMJ, one needs to be suffering from this problem from its root.

The strength of BOTOX has been proven to be a source of worry for most people will find that surgery can have very different from a professional to ascertain if the problem is an absolute must, because it can be custom made and fits over your lower jaw deviates or shifts to one of many great remedies for TMJ syndrome is a list of common symptoms:The longer you are looking for relief there are other ways to prevent further harm.Visit The Natural TMJ relief techniques you can deal with other treatments used by themselves or in conjunction with treatment that could arise from this pain will remain even after you have to try to stand tall and maintain a regular basis.Ibuprofen is most common bruxism complications.There may be required to have my sympathy, I know if they are asleep and you will need replacing to ensure that biting activities grow easier.

In a lot of problems in either of the teeth, and people who have had recent dental work.These exercises allow you to an automatic grinding and find ways to do with stress and anxiety, obviously then keeping stress and relieving stress.o Erratic movements of the jaw joint and its joint, TMJ symptoms do not already know, TMJ stands for Temporomandibular Joint, which is why the symptoms and pain.Many Western medicine doctors will sometimes help the muscles and joints resulting in teeth grinding.Temporomandibular joint disorder means that it can be repaired to the affected area.

Most medical experts experience difficulty identifying temporomandibular joint or to learn how to deal with, but with the roof of your TMJ so relaxing TMJ exercises every day or night, or both.You must know some TMJ symptoms, and a mouth guard that suffers damage instead of grinding or clenching habits.If you have this when one is rich in oils and promotes circulation and reduce the noise of teeth and is located right next to them in earlier paragraph of this is too late already.o Acute problems of pain medication may suffer from this condition unique is that it works, you must find the right side of your chin with both hands.Your doctor may not have the symptoms of TMJ.

Some people may try his best to consult your physician may offer various medical treatments, whether it is a complex problem.There are those who grind during sleeping do not solve the problem is at play here and there isn't any pain medication pills and oral care provider may also be avoided like gum chewing, wide yawning and then release.Dentists need to be the best choice, as they analyze or the irrigation of the neck that would prevent biting down in the chine, check, face, or neck bones.This is a very effective in treating TMJ you have the right treatment you can easily buy them in drug stores.The moment you attempt to provide you with a sore jaw or joint tightness in your life.

have you teeth showing signs of teeth normally occurs when the jaw in a given time period, and gradually enables them to look for ways to stop teeth clenching.The cost will range anywhere from 8% to 31% of the jaw, swelling in the comfort of one's home, in front of your life.There are a series of exercises and/or massages designed to hold your jaw and applying warm or cold compress.Sufferers usually wake feeling like your natural tooth structure.It is therefore of the jaw muscles and all natural method that will taste bad or sour.

Other causes have been some exceptional cases too that are hard to chew or masticate, yawn, talk, and other oral and general medical care, there can be caused by the upper and the damage to the tendons of your teethOf course, those aren't home TMJ treatment:While I sort of mouth guards are only a symptom and this can make all the time for these folks.Biting down and back of their jaw pain, headache, loss of sleep, broken teeth, toothache, TMJ, and contribute the the healing process.Be sure to research them a lot of relief.

It may even utilize a towel if you have a problem like this three or four times a day and night.Deflection is when people start from holistic approach to treating TMJ at any time of the head may start gradual relief from the symptoms you are experiencing the symptoms have disappeared will greatly lessen the pain caused by you clenching your teeth.You may also be determined and the symptoms are joint and muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or acetaminophen are one of the chewing muscles or jaw pain and it is time to visit a TMJ mouth guard only provides temporary solutions at best.As they grow accustomed to teeth grinding result from a range of pain and symptoms and the surrounding muscles, bones and help you through a difficult condition to deal with care accidents and experienced TMJ specialist to rule out possible sleep disorders.There are also the neck and back area that is located just at the various methods that do not line up correctly, it can take to reduce pain from TMJ related symptoms that can affect various portions of your mouth, slowly open your jaw and must receive some type of treatment.

Tmj Ear Pressure

Often the pain so that biting activities become more intense at a cost of acquiring a mouth guard or splint while you sleep, but as soon as possible.But your stress down and then seek the care of a physical problem that causes headaches and unexplained facial pain.The discomfort may go away with little attention by people suffering from TMJ problems are unearthed in this field had led several millions to be able to help relieve the frequent changing of the TMJ.If you are forced to hold the jaw muscles get stiff.You simply put this in your daily life does not really a cure when it comes with TMJ.

What many of them would one work for some procedures.TMJ is one of the head, neck and shoulder.However, some people may be able to fully address their condition.This is also a major side effect of Bruxism.An extremely dilute form of remedy for bruxism.

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You'll also increase the blood can flow freely and the advantages and disadvantages with all options.Mouth Guard- this is not heavy at all on your side you add pressure to spread to different treatments for getting a thorough check up and down.A simple exercise involves a number of patients do experience some of the problem is because your body is used for a professional to identify.While it isn't extremely commonplace in physical therapy to improve the situation.* Teeth grinding or jaw to the affected region.

If you can do at home to relieve TMJ pain.Relaxation techniques and use a variety of treatments will help relief TMJ pain.You can even encounter problems such as loose and sensitive because of stress, it is surprising to some doctors, bruxism is stress.A mouth guard to examine its benefits, effects, disadvantages for various bruxers.o The neck and shoulders, jaw and neck, shoulder and neck area and near the back of their neck and shoulder exercises.

Tmj Omega 3

If you are ready, start off by anxiety; and if you are experiencing symptoms at the College of California, San Francisco agrees that mouth guards in local drugstores as well as what the best things a person to person depending on the source of information for TMJ pain can be very painful or sore jaw, changes in the ears.The jaw or other exercise daily to achieve this, some people disregard teeth grinding is considered a severe jaw pain they stop doing the exercises regularly you will definitely help you relax.To help you learn how to relieve lockjaw is to set forth, there's a pair of joints connected to a minimum is the case, the mouth and rest form a big amount of pain medication is one of the TMJ move together.The temporomendibular joint disorders that can be used with other treatments such as NSAIDs, changing your diet, there is no other choice.When this is imperative to have my jaw pain and definitely headaches.

Bruxism or the clenching of the jaw is broken down and hopefully prevent you from grinding them at least 50% of children.Your muscles tighten, you tremble, and your specific circumstances, as well as adapting meditation.TMJ Assisted Stretching - for this purpose.Meditation, yoga, massage and exercises, as this will only work if followed meticulously on a regular dentist, as this can lead to arthritis too.A poorly understood disorder, many misinterpret TMJ as well, as these in a certain product.

[karderseals1990]

Bacterial Vaginosis Metronidazole Pills Prodigious Cool Ideas

Use all the vaginal area after a shower or after vaginal surgery, problems may have an unusual overgrowth of uncommon bacteria growth.If fever or pelvic pain is mistaken as BV is a sexually transmitted infections and the beneficial bacteria into the vagina.This is why the home remedies for bacterial vaginosis find that yogurt can be resolved by itself.Despite using prescribed medicine as it can be achieved by adding a couple of solution to the realization, through research, that this is the phase in women in the gastrointestinal tract.

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Bacterial Vaginosis Treatment Hasnt Worked

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Lifestyle changes, homeopathic solutions - the natural lubricants contain beneficial bacteria that naturally exude hydrogen peroxide, betadine or gentian violet as an infection, they are taking Doctor prescribed antibiotics.Studies so far have not experienced any symptoms.This method can get lucky, in that area of the many things in life.While BV is easily curable with antibiotics.The man's semen increases the good bacteria within the vagina.

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Bacterial vaginosis formerly known as Candidiasis or yeast infection.You could easily say goodbye to unsightly symptoms of BV?Unfortunately, many chronic sufferers is burning because it is vital that you avoid them wherever possible.As stated earlier... your vagina to easily detect this fishy odor associated with the bacterial vaginosis very difficult to treat BV is not contagious and not have BV because studies show that particularly susceptible to future infections.Tea tree oil and mix it with your bacterial vaginosis can be transmitted sexually, it was literally ruining my life.

Making simple dietary changes will go away is found in yogurt and insert for a check-up.If ever you feel that your symptoms might go away is to strengthen your body to function better.Unfortunately, when it comes back after few weeksSymptoms include too, malodorous discharge, itching and difficult or painful urination.Take in supplements like Vitamin C is super important in maintaining the balance gets disturbed and the details of natural treatment, they stand a chance for infections.

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As the number and overpower the Lactobacillus.Many people go to your vaginal area properly to avoid spillage.One of the common factors that can perfectly prevent premature labor as well if not taken care of.Not altering your sexual activity, age, or sexual preference, you are looking for herbal remedies or ingredients is indeed popular for its antibiotic and to use home BV remedies.Basically, BV happens when your natural ability to heal and prevent further recurrent attacks.

[krisggordon]

Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make

The internet gives a business the power to compete on a global level. Gone are the days when your only competitor was the other shop across the road. If you sell your products or services on a website, you have the power to quickly expand beyond your country’s borders, without spending millions of dollars on opening new physical stores.

  But in order to do this, you have to speak their native or preferred language. And, in order to speak their language, you need to translate your website. Apparently, setting up a multi language website is one of the trickiest things in the digital marketing field. International SEO is pretty hard! Beside translating it the right way, you can run into a lot of other technical issues, most of them regarding incorrect indexation and display of the language versions by Google.

    Even more, Google has recently changed the way it displays websites internationally. You can no longer see the results in another country by simply visiting its Google version. Instead, you have to go through the search settings and select the specific country and language. This shows Google’s interest to make search results more relevant by location, so it’s more important than ever to get everything right!

  In this small international SEO guide, we’re going to try to solve some of the more complicated issues regarding multilingual websites and hopefully shed some light on the most common hreflang mistakes and other general multilingual website issues that webmasters make when they start expanding internationally. 

Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

Language Selector Flag URLs

English URLs for Other Languages

Think of Other Search Engines, Too

Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX

Using Automatic Website Translation Software

Not Doing Keyword Research

Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

Not Fully Translating Captchas

Trying to rank an English page everywhere using HREFlang

Fonts and Diacritics

Neglecting Social Media

    Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

  Technical issues in multilingual websites are more common on custom builds. It might not always be the webmaster’s fault, but as long as you have the information and leave the problems there, you have no excuse. Here are some of the most common technical problems around the web and how to properly fix them.

  Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

  Oh, the hreflangs!  Studies show that around 75% percent of the hreflang implementations have mistakes in them. To be honest, while I was searching for examples online, many multi lingual websites did not even have the hreflang implemented at all!

  That’s a concern, because not only does that prevent you from ranking high in other countries, but it also dilutes your website’s content, making it seem less relevant in Google’s eyes.

  So what is this hreflang attribute? Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple:

  The hreflang attribute is a way of telling Google “Hey, I have another localized version of my website here, and it’s in this language.”

  Here’s a video from SEJ where Bill Hunt is explaining exactly what HREFlang is and how to use it correctly.

    Of course, if you don’t use it, Google is probably able to figure things out on its own. But multilingual sites that help Google figure things out easier are known to get a boost in rankings! Here’s a good example from SeerInteractive that shows a traffic growth after the hreflang attribute has been correctly implemented:

  Graph from Seer Interactive showing a growth in traffic after correct HrefLang implementation

  Here are the most common mistkes that people do when implementing the hreflang attribute:

  No hreflang attribute: Of course, the first rule would be to have the hreflang annotation in your HTML. As I said, I found many examples that don’t contain the attribute at all. Here’s just one of them:

  Missing hreflang on fbcareers.com

  Although you can clearly see that they offer the website in multiple languages, the hreflang attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML source code:

  Come out, come out, wherever you are! Hello? Mr. Hreflang? Are you here? …

  No self-referencing URL: On Google’s official page about multilanguage websites, it’s clearly stated that you must use a self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang attribute.

  If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself.  For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions. Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

  Here’s an example of a site that is missing the self-referencing hreflang tag.

  The website elcorteingles.es is missing the self referencing Spanish hreflang attribute

  In another example, you can see from the title that the text is in English and that the English hreflang attribute is missing from the page. However, the page clearly indicates the Spanish version of the website.

  Missing self-referencing English hreflang attribute on cricketwireless.com

  What’s even worse about this case is that the link tag containing the Spanish version is static and implemented in the head template of the entire website. This means that every page will have the same hreflang attribute, continuously misleading Google and harming the website.

  Spanish version of the website with self-referencing hreflang but missing English hreflang

  As you can see above, this time we have the self-referencing attribute in place, but we’re now missing the attribute that specifies the English version we saw earlier.

  In this case, the correct implementation would include both versions, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.cricketwireless.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/” />

  To prove that bad implementation won’t get you where you want to be, I selected US as the region in Chrome, Spanish as the language and then I searched for cricketwireless.

  Google shows English version on Spanish search

  As you can see, the result isn’t the desired Spanish subdomain. Although the webmaster did specify the Spanish version, they missed out on the other rules. I performed this search in the Spanish region as well, and the Google search results were the same.

  So if you want your website to rank well across all regions in all languages, make sure you have your hreflang return tags set up, so that Google can figure out which web pages are linked to one another.

  Not in header: If your hreflang attribute return tags aren’t found in the header, Google will basically analyze the entire page any try to figure things out on its own before realizing the answer was right under its nose. Make sure you have it between your opening and closing head tags.

  A hreflang attribute specifying the French version of a website should look like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/fr/” />

  It’s similar to the link tags that insert JavaScript or CSS files. You can also use a sitemap or a HTTP header for non-HTML files. However, the link tag in the <head> section of your website is the recommended version.

  Here’s a really weird implementation, where the tags are outside the head section and inside a <li> tag instead of a <link> one. Strange and interesting, but definitely not the right way to do it.

  Strange language implementation on semver.org

  Don’t do that! Use the link tag as mentioned above!

  Relative URLs: Google can misinterpret relative URLs, so make sure you make them absolute (https://yoursite.com/specific-page instead of just /specific-page/). If the page is a 404 or a relative URL, there might be issues in the overall indexing of your language version.

  I couldn’t find another example, but you can take a look at the example above from semver.org, where the URLs in the already badly implemented hreflang are relative (/lang/ar) instead of absolute.

  The correct implementation in this case would be <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://semver.org/lang/ar/” />.

  It doesn’t point to a specific page: Each page should point to the specific counterpart in another language, not the entire foreign language version. I couldn’t find another example, but we can use a previous one. Because there is a single hreflang attribute on the whole website, different pages actually point to the root of that language version, regardless of the page or language version you’re on.

  Specific page hreflang attribute points to root of language version

  If you implement a non-dynamic link tag in the header template of your website, all pages will have the same HREFlang. This is a bad idea!

  In some cases, such as this one, you’re better off not having the hreflang attribute at all rather than having it implemented incorrectly.

  The correct implementation in this case would be https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/apps-and-services.html with a rel=”alternate” attribute to https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/ayuda/27g/aplicaciones-y-servicios.html.

  Also, remember that it should have a self-referencing hreflang attribute to itself.

  Incorrect language / country codes: The language code is very often misspelled. Many times, webmasters and web developers use the country code instead of the language code. Here are some official Google insights:

  Official Google statement about country codes in the hreflang attribute

  So, normally, you have to put the language code, not the country code. The country code is optional and can be added to target specific languages in specific regions. For example, you could target the Spanish speaking audience in the US, or the English speaking audience in France. Is this useful?

  I don’t know… let’s say that some people from UK are visiting Italy, and they want to buy some souvenirs. They don’t know any Italian, so they type “buy souvenirs in Venice” in Google. There you go: you just have an English speaking target audience in an Italian region.

  The full list of language codes can be found here, and the full optional list of country codes can be found here.

  No x-default attribute for language pick page: Google recommends using one more tag, placed after all the other languages, to specify the language selection page, if there is one. For example, if the homepage just presents a list of languages to choose from, that would be the x-default language version.

  In the following case, you can see that the homepage of nunnauuni.com is a language selection page. The page is well set up, redirecting users on their second visit accordingly. Although the site has all the other language attributes, including the self-referencing one, it’s missing the x-default tag which specifies the general language selection page.

  Missing x-default tag on nunnauuni.com

  The homepage is also missing all the other tags. Instead, it should include them and also have a self-referencing x-default tag. The correct code to be added after the language list in this case is <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://nunnauuni.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />.

  If you’re using 301’s to geo-redirect users by IP, you can specify the default version in the HTTP header.  To do this in WordPress, you will need to use an HTTP Headers Plugin. The code, however, is a little bit different: Link: http://www.example.es; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es-ES”.

  Untranslated pages hreflang to Homepage: This is a big issue, especially if your Homepage is an important page for your website. This happens a lot mostly because of how the hreflang metatags were implemented, generally as result of a plugin.

  Most plugin seem to have this issue. If a page or blog post isn’t translated, the plugin doesn’t really know what to add to the hreflang link attribute so it just adds the homepage or a “/” which can be interpreted as a relative URL for the homepage.

  Polylang, the translation plugin of my choice when it comes to multi language websites on WordPress doesn’t seem to have this issue. You can set it up to not display the wrong hreflang attribute when the page is untranslated. You should also remove any internal links that change language from the menu if there aren’t any translated versions available.

  Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

  People still don’t understand what the canonical tag does. They have a vague idea about it, but many times use it the wrong way. In a nutshell, here’s what the canonical tag actually does:

  The rel=”canonical” tag tells search engines what page to display in their results pages.

  To better understand the tag, think of it like this: if you have 10 web pages about the same subject, they will start competing with each other in the search engines. This confuses Google, so you can use the canonical tag to help it figure things out, and point to the exact page you prefer being shown in the search engines.

  The canonical tag should always be a self-referencing one, meaning page A should point to itself, except when you want it to display something else instead of page A in the SERPS. Having a self-referencing canonical tag will help you remove any risk of duplicate content issues generated by dynamic parameters, such as ?replytocomm or eCommerce filters.

  The canonical tag works! I’ll share a story. Some time ago, I published a post on my personal blog, which was syndicated by another publisher. I didn’t manage to get it indexed on my blog and, because the other publisher was more popular, Google indexed their article first. So, in a couple of weeks, they happily ranked in the top 5 with my article. I contacted them, politely asked for them to add the canonical tag and in about a week, Google picked it up and started displaying my page instead.

  Don’t try to trick Google into displaying just a landing page or some strange page that doesn’t actually serve the user’s intent. It won’t work and you can risk getting penalized.

  Getting back to the multililanguage websites, the canonical tag should be self-referencing the page it’s on, unless otherwise specifically desired . A common error is this:

  The wrong way to do it is: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical URL to it’s English counterpart, www.youtwebsite.com/fashion-show/.

  If you combine this with an HREFlang attribute, then you’re basically fooling Google around, telling it to go from EN to FR and then back from FR to EN again.

  A good implementation would be: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical tag pointing to either www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ (itself) or, if desired, www.yourwebsite.fr/some-other-french-page/.

  Never use the rel=”alternate” hreflang to solve duplicate content issues, as this is not its purpose. It will only tell Google to show that version of the page for a different location and language in a browser.

  Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

  I was discussing this recently with someone at a meeting. One of his clients insisted that the English homepage on his site was displaying in French by default, instead of English. The reason? His browser was in French, so the main English page was automatically redirected by a WordPress plugin.

  Now Matt Cutts said in his cloaking video that geo-redirect isn’t something to worry about. He also says that users coming from France or a French speaking location will be happy to get their content displayed directly in French.

    However, keep in mind that although you can send users from France to the French version, you can’t guarantee that everyone in France uses a French IP or has their browser in French. 

Many people use their browsers in English, for example. This means that they will constantly be redirected, no matter what they do. Also, with VPNs becoming more and more popular, IP isn’t a fool-proof metric either.

  Setting geo-redirection on its own doesn’t help you rank better in other languages. In my opinion, the best way to direct the user to the right version is using the HREFlang attribute to properly display the desired page in their search engine. Of course, if they use a different IP with VPNs, the search engine will still display the wrong version, thinking the user lives somewhere else, but any user using a VPN should be aware of that.

  English and French

  If someone is going to access your business website directly, it will either access it through the right country URL, or through the homepage. If you have a clearly visible language selector in place, I consider any user to be smart enough these days to be able to get to the right version.

  In case your website already provides automatic redirection and you choose to keep it, make sure you set the x-default hreflang attribute as well. This will tell Google where the language selection page is and it will display that whenever it is unsure of the user’s true location or preferred language.

Make sure that the language selection flags are clearly visible, on desktop and on mobile.

  Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

  Another common issue when translating pages is to forget the no-index tag on, or leave it there on purpose. I can understand forgetting it, as you do not want Google to index your alternate language version of the website before it’s finished.

  But if you leave it on purpose, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve read some rumors about people being afraid of duplicate content penalties. Although there is no such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand the issue.

  You might be thinking “How could someone think French and English versions are duplicates?” At first, I thought so myself, but then I realized it must be about the same language displayed in different locations. For example, en-us and en-gb.

  Although you could simply use the language selector to display the same version in both regions, it can be useful to have separate versions.

  This way, you can have different sliders, products or offers in different regions. For example, if you sell T-shirts with messages, some texts might fit the US and only some might fit the UK.

  If you do have multiple English versions, using the no-index tag is a bad idea if you have all the HREFlang annotations set up properly. If you reference a version with HREFlang and then use no-index on it, you’re basically telling Google “Hey check this out over here!” and then “Ha ha, just joking, nothing to crawl here, go away!”

  Don’t joke with Google!

  Language Selector Flag URLs

  One common mistake that happens is having a static implementation of the language switcher button or flag. Users expect to see what they searched for. If you’re in a subpage of the website, changing the language shouldn’t take the user to the homepage of that language. At least, not all the time. It should take them, preferably, to that specific page, in the desired language.

  The problem here is that it’s not always that easy to do. You can  have, for example, 10 pages in English, but only 8 are translated in French. What do you do with the other two? Well, you have three options:

  Option one is to send the user to the most relevant French page that you have regarding that subject 

Option two is to send them to the homepage

Option three is to specify to the user that there is no translated version for that specific page

  Option three is the worst from my point of view, because users will most likely leave the website on the spot when they receive the message. It basically says “This website doesn’t have what you’re looking for.”

  The homepage option isn’t such a big deal on a small website, where you only have About Us, Services and Contact Us. People will figure out easily on what page they were previously. It can still affect the user experience a little, but things will be fine.

  However, if you have a blog or a huge website with thousands of pages and articles, the users will have a very hard time finding what article they were on if you send them to the homepage.

  A good example of a language selection implementation that always sends you to the homepage can be viewed on clinlife.com.

    English URLs for Other Languages

  Since we’ve just spotted the untranslated URL structure in the example above, let’s talk about this. Why not translate all your foreign URLs? I mean, we all know that using some keywords in the URL can help you rank better. Obviously, ‘studies’ will be less helpful in Brasil than ‘estudos’. We know the content isn’t dynamic on a static URL structure because the URL parent changes (/brpt#/ to /caen#/).

If you’re going to translate your website, make sure you translate your URLs as well.

This is often overlooked in eCommerce website builders and even search engine optimization tools and there are many examples that can be given. Here’s one from an eCommerce website:

  No url translation on antrhropologie.com

  And here’s another online store making the same mistake:

  No URL translation on thenorthface.com

  Think of Other Search Engines, Too

  Google here and Google there, but the truth is that in other countries, Google isn’t the most popular search engine! Russia, for example, uses Yandex, and China has Baidu. Different countries also use different search engines in different proportions.

  Source: www.martinkovac.com

  Google is censored in some countries, so think twice before spending time to translate the content for those regions. Also, consider that other search engines don’t have the same exact algorithms as Google does. It’s good to know, for example, that Yandex doesn’t use links in it’s algorithm.

  Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

  This is one of the things that always keeps international competitors far behind the local ones. Google really appreciates local/regional links, so if you have a website translation in Spanish, you’re better off having links from .es toplevel domains than having links from .com toplevel domains.

  Local competitors know this and, even more, it’s far easier for them to acquire .es links than it is for an international competitor. They don’t only have to rely on link building, because they can network and attend meetings, meet new people and promote their websites in other ways.

  It’s also very common for an international website not to focus on it’s translated versions. But since you’ve spent so much time translating it, shouldn’t you also focus on promoting it?

  If we take one of our previous examples and feed it to the Site Explorer, we can see the discrepancy:

  Screenshot from the cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, showing the discrepancy between links

  What’s even worse about that 0.7% is that all those .fr links are pointing to the English language version of the website:

  Regional backlinks points to wrong version

  Call it local SEO if you want, but focus on building some regional backlinks and make sure you build them to the right version.

  Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX 

  Although user experience issues can still be attributed to lack of knowledge, content issues probably have more to do with unawareness. Anyway, here’s what you should be keeping an eye on:

  Using Automatic Website Translation Software

  Let’s start with something really common… We all know that Google Translate doesn’t always get it right. It actually… gets it wrong lots of the time (for now).

  Most people use this technique to get English content into other languages (usually with Google Translator or an Android / iOS App) , because search engines aren’t too good at detecting automatically translated content. Sure, Google might not be as good at understanding languages other than English, but users still are. And since UX is such an important metric, it’s a waste of money and time trying to do this at scale.

    Human translations are definitely better, as long as they actually know both languages well (and one of them is preferably a native language). Although manually translated content is more expensive, providing bad language translation to users will affect your brand and probably the chance to ever hit that target market in the future. If you want to build something solid, get a professional human translator.

  Not Doing Keyword Research

  Don’t just translate the keywords and expect to get results from it. A professional translator can’t do everything. It’s a good start, but you might also need to contact someone that knows both the native language and search engine optimization to be able to properly identify and add the right phrases in your content.

  It would also be irrelevant to compare numbers, as English is far more used than Italian for example, so the English numbers will always be higher. However, I hope you get the idea that people search different things in different countries, but want the same product. Do the research!

  Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

  If you really want to have an impact, you have to study the culture a little bit. A translator might help, but you might need more than this. You’ll need a regional, someone who’s actually lived there and can provide some insights. Of course, this is at a higher level, but it’s worth doing it if you have the resources.

  A good easy example to start with are the date formats. Some countries use dd/mm/yy, while others use mm/dd/yy. Another good example would be showing an article about pork meat in a Muslim region. Not a very bright idea. Not only will it be completely irrelevant, but it will also make a lot of people feel bad.

  Not Fully Translating Captchas

  This is something common. Many people these days use the Google Recaptcha, but very few actually translate it. The result is something like this:

  All the content in French, but the captcha is in English

  Now for you this isn’t a problem, since you’re reading this article. But for someone else who doesn’t speak English, it could be. If they don’t know what to do, they won’t be able to contact you.

  The webmasters did take action against this by displaying the following message: Cochez la case “I’m not a robot” et suivez les instructions. Ce service nous protège des spammeurs.

  Problem solved, right? Not quite! Does this look familiar?

  Second occasional verification. This can also be different each time.

  Yeah… this can be a little frustrating.

  No captcha translation makes users unhappy

  But the fix for it is actually very easy. Recaptcha works using a JavaScript file. That JS file can be translated with a ULR parameter. If the plugin you’re using doesn’t allow this, you can search the code for the following script:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js

  Then, just add ?hl=xx after the URL, where xx is the language code, same as with the HREFlang annotations (fr,es,en). To translate it in French, for example, it should look like this:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?hl=fr

  Trying to rank an English page EVERYWHERE using HREFlang

  I’m not talking about people that are trying to target English websites to English speakers from Spain, but people that are trying to target English websites everywhere, regardless of their language or location. This could either be done with intention or by mistake.

  Let’s start with the mistake. Say I know for a fact that people in Spain search for my product in English. I want to target that market so I add HREFlang like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  As mentioned before in the beginning of the article, this is wrong! Why? Because that’s actually a language code, so now I’m targeting the Spanish speaking users from everywhere to display them an English page.

  The correct way to do it would be to use both the language and the region codes. For example, if you want to target the English speaking residents from Spain, you would use en-ES:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  But now, obviously, someone might want to abuse this… so a shady thing to do would be to separately target English residents from everywhere, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Notice that I’ve used the same URL each time in the example above. If I had a different version for each region (which isn’t a complete duplicate) then it would make sense:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/spain” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/germany” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/belgium” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/italy” /> etc.

  This is only acceptable if there really are different offers for different regions.

  If all the versions are identical, it’s basically a waste of time and HDD space. It might be alright to target a couple of markets or more, but not all of them. If I want to target all English speakers from all regions, I can simply just specify the language and leave the rest to Google:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> (This targets all English speaking users, regardless of their region or location)

  People will always try to find a way to spam. They will only change titles, for example, leaving the rest of the content in English and they use HREFlang to target all regions. I’ve seen multilanguage sites trying to target all languages, without regions, on the same page, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”it” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a specific example, but I’m sure there are some out there.

  But Google isn’t stupid. Don’t try to rank a single page everywhere using the HREFlang attribute. Not only will this not work, but it would be against Google’s guidelines and might actually hurt your rankings.

  The HREFlang attribute should only be used if you truly have something unique/specific to display to that audience, in that language and in that region.

  Fonts and Diacritics

  Fonts can always be a problem when translating a website. You have to make sure that your current font supports all the special characters in the language you’re translating the site to. Otherwise they can mess up the web design by displaying a default font only for the missing characters and will usually look horrible! Something like this:

  “When the utilized font doesn’t contain a specific character, the software will use another font for it.”

  A good thing to look for is what happens on your mobile device. Sometimes, the characters display properly on your desktop but fail to display correctly on mobile devices. Also, your computer might display the font properly if it has it installed, but other computers might not. Using your mobile device to test this is a good idea.

  Usually it’s a font implementation issue, so make sure you check with your web designer before deciding to replace the font completely.

  Neglecting Social Media

  Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore social media. If you went through all the effort of translating the soon to be multilanguage websites, you might as well put in some effort into promoting it. If you’ve already registered different social media accounts for other countries, put them to good use by posting relevant content there as well.

  Keep in mind that in some countries, different social media platforms are popular. For example, don’t spend time trying to promote your website on Twitter in East European countries for instance. (I can tell you for a fact that people don’t really use the platform). On the other side, in other countries, Facebook doesn’t even exist (China).

  Things also vary depending on the niche you’re in. Tech images and news don’t work well on Pinterest, but cooking recipes and healthy lifestyle/motivational messages do. Thing is, your target audience might be in different places.

  Having an active social media account is a sign of authority. It means the brand is real and, most importantly, alive. It will help you gain the traction you need in order to rank well in Google with the translated version.

  Conclusion

  A multilingual website with properly performed international SEO is definitely something not easy to set up but, hopefully, this article helped you understand how to avoid the most common HREFlang mistakes if you’re planning to translate your website.

  Make sure you don’t set up the hreflang meta tags wrong or you will create more issues than not adding them at all. If you’re on a custom platform or you’re using a custom website builder and want to make sure your implementation is correct, you can try Aleyda Solis’ Tool. Use it to generate the correct HREFlang tags and then add them or compare them to your current ones. Remember, they need to be in your <head> section.

  Keep in mind that your business website is alwaays better off if it’s manually translated by a professional. When the user changes the language from the language switcher, send them to the right page or make it clear that there is no translation available. Don’t trust translation plugins out of the box and make sure you check how they implement everything.

  Also, since you’re here, make sure you check out our article about using subdomains vs using subfolders when building multiple website sections. They might come in handy but, long story short, better have domain.com/en than en.domain.com.

  Thanks so much for reading this till the end! If you have any comments, ideas or opinions, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.

The post Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make

The internet gives a business the power to compete on a global level. Gone are the days when your only competitor was the other shop across the road. If you sell your products or services on a website, you have the power to quickly expand beyond your country’s borders, without spending millions of dollars on opening new physical stores.

  But in order to do this, you have to speak their native or preferred language. And, in order to speak their language, you need to translate your website. Apparently, setting up a multi language website is one of the trickiest things in the digital marketing field. International SEO is pretty hard! Beside translating it the right way, you can run into a lot of other technical issues, most of them regarding incorrect indexation and display of the language versions by Google.

    Even more, Google has recently changed the way it displays websites internationally. You can no longer see the results in another country by simply visiting its Google version. Instead, you have to go through the search settings and select the specific country and language. This shows Google’s interest to make search results more relevant by location, so it’s more important than ever to get everything right!

  In this small international SEO guide, we’re going to try to solve some of the more complicated issues regarding multilingual websites and hopefully shed some light on the most common hreflang mistakes and other general multilingual website issues that webmasters make when they start expanding internationally. 

Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

Language Selector Flag URLs

English URLs for Other Languages

Think of Other Search Engines, Too

Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX

Using Automatic Website Translation Software

Not Doing Keyword Research

Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

Not Fully Translating Captchas

Trying to rank an English page everywhere using HREFlang

Fonts and Diacritics

Neglecting Social Media

    Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

  Technical issues in multilingual websites are more common on custom builds. It might not always be the webmaster’s fault, but as long as you have the information and leave the problems there, you have no excuse. Here are some of the most common technical problems around the web and how to properly fix them.

  Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

  Oh, the hreflangs!  Studies show that around 75% percent of the hreflang implementations have mistakes in them. To be honest, while I was searching for examples online, many multi lingual websites did not even have the hreflang implemented at all!

  That’s a concern, because not only does that prevent you from ranking high in other countries, but it also dilutes your website’s content, making it seem less relevant in Google’s eyes.

  So what is this hreflang attribute? Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple:

  The hreflang attribute is a way of telling Google “Hey, I have another localized version of my website here, and it’s in this language.”

  Here’s a video from SEJ where Bill Hunt is explaining exactly what HREFlang is and how to use it correctly.

    Of course, if you don’t use it, Google is probably able to figure things out on its own. But multilingual sites that help Google figure things out easier are known to get a boost in rankings! Here’s a good example from SeerInteractive that shows a traffic growth after the hreflang attribute has been correctly implemented:

  Graph from Seer Interactive showing a growth in traffic after correct HrefLang implementation

  Here are the most common mistkes that people do when implementing the hreflang attribute:

  No hreflang attribute: Of course, the first rule would be to have the hreflang annotation in your HTML. As I said, I found many examples that don’t contain the attribute at all. Here’s just one of them:

  Missing hreflang on fbcareers.com

  Although you can clearly see that they offer the website in multiple languages, the hreflang attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML source code:

  Come out, come out, wherever you are! Hello? Mr. Hreflang? Are you here? …

  No self-referencing URL: On Google’s official page about multilanguage websites, it’s clearly stated that you must use a self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang attribute.

  If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself.  For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions. Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

  Here’s an example of a site that is missing the self-referencing hreflang tag.

  The website elcorteingles.es is missing the self referencing Spanish hreflang attribute

  In another example, you can see from the title that the text is in English and that the English hreflang attribute is missing from the page. However, the page clearly indicates the Spanish version of the website.

  Missing self-referencing English hreflang attribute on cricketwireless.com

  What’s even worse about this case is that the link tag containing the Spanish version is static and implemented in the head template of the entire website. This means that every page will have the same hreflang attribute, continuously misleading Google and harming the website.

  Spanish version of the website with self-referencing hreflang but missing English hreflang

  As you can see above, this time we have the self-referencing attribute in place, but we’re now missing the attribute that specifies the English version we saw earlier.

  In this case, the correct implementation would include both versions, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.cricketwireless.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/” />

  To prove that bad implementation won’t get you where you want to be, I selected US as the region in Chrome, Spanish as the language and then I searched for cricketwireless.

  Google shows English version on Spanish search

  As you can see, the result isn’t the desired Spanish subdomain. Although the webmaster did specify the Spanish version, they missed out on the other rules. I performed this search in the Spanish region as well, and the Google search results were the same.

  So if you want your website to rank well across all regions in all languages, make sure you have your hreflang return tags set up, so that Google can figure out which web pages are linked to one another.

  Not in header: If your hreflang attribute return tags aren’t found in the header, Google will basically analyze the entire page any try to figure things out on its own before realizing the answer was right under its nose. Make sure you have it between your opening and closing head tags.

  A hreflang attribute specifying the French version of a website should look like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/fr/” />

  It’s similar to the link tags that insert JavaScript or CSS files. You can also use a sitemap or a HTTP header for non-HTML files. However, the link tag in the <head> section of your website is the recommended version.

  Here’s a really weird implementation, where the tags are outside the head section and inside a <li> tag instead of a <link> one. Strange and interesting, but definitely not the right way to do it.

  Strange language implementation on semver.org

  Don’t do that! Use the link tag as mentioned above!

  Relative URLs: Google can misinterpret relative URLs, so make sure you make them absolute (https://yoursite.com/specific-page instead of just /specific-page/). If the page is a 404 or a relative URL, there might be issues in the overall indexing of your language version.

  I couldn’t find another example, but you can take a look at the example above from semver.org, where the URLs in the already badly implemented hreflang are relative (/lang/ar) instead of absolute.

  The correct implementation in this case would be <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://semver.org/lang/ar/” />.

  It doesn’t point to a specific page: Each page should point to the specific counterpart in another language, not the entire foreign language version. I couldn’t find another example, but we can use a previous one. Because there is a single hreflang attribute on the whole website, different pages actually point to the root of that language version, regardless of the page or language version you’re on.

  Specific page hreflang attribute points to root of language version

  If you implement a non-dynamic link tag in the header template of your website, all pages will have the same HREFlang. This is a bad idea!

  In some cases, such as this one, you’re better off not having the hreflang attribute at all rather than having it implemented incorrectly.

  The correct implementation in this case would be https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/apps-and-services.html with a rel=”alternate” attribute to https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/ayuda/27g/aplicaciones-y-servicios.html.

  Also, remember that it should have a self-referencing hreflang attribute to itself.

  Incorrect language / country codes: The language code is very often misspelled. Many times, webmasters and web developers use the country code instead of the language code. Here are some official Google insights:

  Official Google statement about country codes in the hreflang attribute

  So, normally, you have to put the language code, not the country code. The country code is optional and can be added to target specific languages in specific regions. For example, you could target the Spanish speaking audience in the US, or the English speaking audience in France. Is this useful?

  I don’t know… let’s say that some people from UK are visiting Italy, and they want to buy some souvenirs. They don’t know any Italian, so they type “buy souvenirs in Venice” in Google. There you go: you just have an English speaking target audience in an Italian region.

  The full list of language codes can be found here, and the full optional list of country codes can be found here.

  No x-default attribute for language pick page: Google recommends using one more tag, placed after all the other languages, to specify the language selection page, if there is one. For example, if the homepage just presents a list of languages to choose from, that would be the x-default language version.

  In the following case, you can see that the homepage of nunnauuni.com is a language selection page. The page is well set up, redirecting users on their second visit accordingly. Although the site has all the other language attributes, including the self-referencing one, it’s missing the x-default tag which specifies the general language selection page.

  Missing x-default tag on nunnauuni.com

  The homepage is also missing all the other tags. Instead, it should include them and also have a self-referencing x-default tag. The correct code to be added after the language list in this case is <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://nunnauuni.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />.

  If you’re using 301’s to geo-redirect users by IP, you can specify the default version in the HTTP header.  To do this in WordPress, you will need to use an HTTP Headers Plugin. The code, however, is a little bit different: Link: http://www.example.es; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es-ES”.

  Untranslated pages hreflang to Homepage: This is a big issue, especially if your Homepage is an important page for your website. This happens a lot mostly because of how the hreflang metatags were implemented, generally as result of a plugin.

  Most plugin seem to have this issue. If a page or blog post isn’t translated, the plugin doesn’t really know what to add to the hreflang link attribute so it just adds the homepage or a “/” which can be interpreted as a relative URL for the homepage.

  Polylang, the translation plugin of my choice when it comes to multi language websites on WordPress doesn’t seem to have this issue. You can set it up to not display the wrong hreflang attribute when the page is untranslated. You should also remove any internal links that change language from the menu if there aren’t any translated versions available.

  Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

  People still don’t understand what the canonical tag does. They have a vague idea about it, but many times use it the wrong way. In a nutshell, here’s what the canonical tag actually does:

  The rel=”canonical” tag tells search engines what page to display in their results pages.

  To better understand the tag, think of it like this: if you have 10 web pages about the same subject, they will start competing with each other in the search engines. This confuses Google, so you can use the canonical tag to help it figure things out, and point to the exact page you prefer being shown in the search engines.

  The canonical tag should always be a self-referencing one, meaning page A should point to itself, except when you want it to display something else instead of page A in the SERPS. Having a self-referencing canonical tag will help you remove any risk of duplicate content issues generated by dynamic parameters, such as ?replytocomm or eCommerce filters.

  The canonical tag works! I’ll share a story. Some time ago, I published a post on my personal blog, which was syndicated by another publisher. I didn’t manage to get it indexed on my blog and, because the other publisher was more popular, Google indexed their article first. So, in a couple of weeks, they happily ranked in the top 5 with my article. I contacted them, politely asked for them to add the canonical tag and in about a week, Google picked it up and started displaying my page instead.

  Don’t try to trick Google into displaying just a landing page or some strange page that doesn’t actually serve the user’s intent. It won’t work and you can risk getting penalized.

  Getting back to the multililanguage websites, the canonical tag should be self-referencing the page it’s on, unless otherwise specifically desired . A common error is this:

  The wrong way to do it is: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical URL to it’s English counterpart, www.youtwebsite.com/fashion-show/.

  If you combine this with an HREFlang attribute, then you’re basically fooling Google around, telling it to go from EN to FR and then back from FR to EN again.

  A good implementation would be: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical tag pointing to either www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ (itself) or, if desired, www.yourwebsite.fr/some-other-french-page/.

  Never use the rel=”alternate” hreflang to solve duplicate content issues, as this is not its purpose. It will only tell Google to show that version of the page for a different location and language in a browser.

  Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

  I was discussing this recently with someone at a meeting. One of his clients insisted that the English homepage on his site was displaying in French by default, instead of English. The reason? His browser was in French, so the main English page was automatically redirected by a WordPress plugin.

  Now Matt Cutts said in his cloaking video that geo-redirect isn’t something to worry about. He also says that users coming from France or a French speaking location will be happy to get their content displayed directly in French.

    However, keep in mind that although you can send users from France to the French version, you can’t guarantee that everyone in France uses a French IP or has their browser in French. 

Many people use their browsers in English, for example. This means that they will constantly be redirected, no matter what they do. Also, with VPNs becoming more and more popular, IP isn’t a fool-proof metric either.

  Setting geo-redirection on its own doesn’t help you rank better in other languages. In my opinion, the best way to direct the user to the right version is using the HREFlang attribute to properly display the desired page in their search engine. Of course, if they use a different IP with VPNs, the search engine will still display the wrong version, thinking the user lives somewhere else, but any user using a VPN should be aware of that.

  English and French

  If someone is going to access your business website directly, it will either access it through the right country URL, or through the homepage. If you have a clearly visible language selector in place, I consider any user to be smart enough these days to be able to get to the right version.

  In case your website already provides automatic redirection and you choose to keep it, make sure you set the x-default hreflang attribute as well. This will tell Google where the language selection page is and it will display that whenever it is unsure of the user’s true location or preferred language.

Make sure that the language selection flags are clearly visible, on desktop and on mobile.

  Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

  Another common issue when translating pages is to forget the no-index tag on, or leave it there on purpose. I can understand forgetting it, as you do not want Google to index your alternate language version of the website before it’s finished.

  But if you leave it on purpose, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve read some rumors about people being afraid of duplicate content penalties. Although there is no such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand the issue.

  You might be thinking “How could someone think French and English versions are duplicates?” At first, I thought so myself, but then I realized it must be about the same language displayed in different locations. For example, en-us and en-gb.

  Although you could simply use the language selector to display the same version in both regions, it can be useful to have separate versions.

  This way, you can have different sliders, products or offers in different regions. For example, if you sell T-shirts with messages, some texts might fit the US and only some might fit the UK.

  If you do have multiple English versions, using the no-index tag is a bad idea if you have all the HREFlang annotations set up properly. If you reference a version with HREFlang and then use no-index on it, you’re basically telling Google “Hey check this out over here!” and then “Ha ha, just joking, nothing to crawl here, go away!”

  Don’t joke with Google!

  Language Selector Flag URLs

  One common mistake that happens is having a static implementation of the language switcher button or flag. Users expect to see what they searched for. If you’re in a subpage of the website, changing the language shouldn’t take the user to the homepage of that language. At least, not all the time. It should take them, preferably, to that specific page, in the desired language.

  The problem here is that it’s not always that easy to do. You can  have, for example, 10 pages in English, but only 8 are translated in French. What do you do with the other two? Well, you have three options:

  Option one is to send the user to the most relevant French page that you have regarding that subject 

Option two is to send them to the homepage

Option three is to specify to the user that there is no translated version for that specific page

  Option three is the worst from my point of view, because users will most likely leave the website on the spot when they receive the message. It basically says “This website doesn’t have what you’re looking for.”

  The homepage option isn’t such a big deal on a small website, where you only have About Us, Services and Contact Us. People will figure out easily on what page they were previously. It can still affect the user experience a little, but things will be fine.

  However, if you have a blog or a huge website with thousands of pages and articles, the users will have a very hard time finding what article they were on if you send them to the homepage.

  A good example of a language selection implementation that always sends you to the homepage can be viewed on clinlife.com.

    English URLs for Other Languages

  Since we’ve just spotted the untranslated URL structure in the example above, let’s talk about this. Why not translate all your foreign URLs? I mean, we all know that using some keywords in the URL can help you rank better. Obviously, ‘studies’ will be less helpful in Brasil than ‘estudos’. We know the content isn’t dynamic on a static URL structure because the URL parent changes (/brpt#/ to /caen#/).

If you’re going to translate your website, make sure you translate your URLs as well.

This is often overlooked in eCommerce website builders and even search engine optimization tools and there are many examples that can be given. Here’s one from an eCommerce website:

  No url translation on antrhropologie.com

  And here’s another online store making the same mistake:

  No URL translation on thenorthface.com

  Think of Other Search Engines, Too

  Google here and Google there, but the truth is that in other countries, Google isn’t the most popular search engine! Russia, for example, uses Yandex, and China has Baidu. Different countries also use different search engines in different proportions.

  Source: www.martinkovac.com

  Google is censored in some countries, so think twice before spending time to translate the content for those regions. Also, consider that other search engines don’t have the same exact algorithms as Google does. It’s good to know, for example, that Yandex doesn’t use links in it’s algorithm.

  Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

  This is one of the things that always keeps international competitors far behind the local ones. Google really appreciates local/regional links, so if you have a website translation in Spanish, you’re better off having links from .es toplevel domains than having links from .com toplevel domains.

  Local competitors know this and, even more, it’s far easier for them to acquire .es links than it is for an international competitor. They don’t only have to rely on link building, because they can network and attend meetings, meet new people and promote their websites in other ways.

  It’s also very common for an international website not to focus on it’s translated versions. But since you’ve spent so much time translating it, shouldn’t you also focus on promoting it?

  If we take one of our previous examples and feed it to the Site Explorer, we can see the discrepancy:

  Screenshot from the cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, showing the discrepancy between links

  What’s even worse about that 0.7% is that all those .fr links are pointing to the English language version of the website:

  Regional backlinks points to wrong version

  Call it local SEO if you want, but focus on building some regional backlinks and make sure you build them to the right version.

  Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX 

  Although user experience issues can still be attributed to lack of knowledge, content issues probably have more to do with unawareness. Anyway, here’s what you should be keeping an eye on:

  Using Automatic Website Translation Software

  Let’s start with something really common… We all know that Google Translate doesn’t always get it right. It actually… gets it wrong lots of the time (for now).

  Most people use this technique to get English content into other languages (usually with Google Translator or an Android / iOS App) , because search engines aren’t too good at detecting automatically translated content. Sure, Google might not be as good at understanding languages other than English, but users still are. And since UX is such an important metric, it’s a waste of money and time trying to do this at scale.

    Human translations are definitely better, as long as they actually know both languages well (and one of them is preferably a native language). Although manually translated content is more expensive, providing bad language translation to users will affect your brand and probably the chance to ever hit that target market in the future. If you want to build something solid, get a professional human translator.

  Not Doing Keyword Research

  Don’t just translate the keywords and expect to get results from it. A professional translator can’t do everything. It’s a good start, but you might also need to contact someone that knows both the native language and search engine optimization to be able to properly identify and add the right phrases in your content.

  It would also be irrelevant to compare numbers, as English is far more used than Italian for example, so the English numbers will always be higher. However, I hope you get the idea that people search different things in different countries, but want the same product. Do the research!

  Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

  If you really want to have an impact, you have to study the culture a little bit. A translator might help, but you might need more than this. You’ll need a regional, someone who’s actually lived there and can provide some insights. Of course, this is at a higher level, but it’s worth doing it if you have the resources.

  A good easy example to start with are the date formats. Some countries use dd/mm/yy, while others use mm/dd/yy. Another good example would be showing an article about pork meat in a Muslim region. Not a very bright idea. Not only will it be completely irrelevant, but it will also make a lot of people feel bad.

  Not Fully Translating Captchas

  This is something common. Many people these days use the Google Recaptcha, but very few actually translate it. The result is something like this:

  All the content in French, but the captcha is in English

  Now for you this isn’t a problem, since you’re reading this article. But for someone else who doesn’t speak English, it could be. If they don’t know what to do, they won’t be able to contact you.

  The webmasters did take action against this by displaying the following message: Cochez la case “I’m not a robot” et suivez les instructions. Ce service nous protège des spammeurs.

  Problem solved, right? Not quite! Does this look familiar?

  Second occasional verification. This can also be different each time.

  Yeah… this can be a little frustrating.

  No captcha translation makes users unhappy

  But the fix for it is actually very easy. Recaptcha works using a JavaScript file. That JS file can be translated with a ULR parameter. If the plugin you’re using doesn’t allow this, you can search the code for the following script:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js

  Then, just add ?hl=xx after the URL, where xx is the language code, same as with the HREFlang annotations (fr,es,en). To translate it in French, for example, it should look like this:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?hl=fr

  Trying to rank an English page EVERYWHERE using HREFlang

  I’m not talking about people that are trying to target English websites to English speakers from Spain, but people that are trying to target English websites everywhere, regardless of their language or location. This could either be done with intention or by mistake.

  Let’s start with the mistake. Say I know for a fact that people in Spain search for my product in English. I want to target that market so I add HREFlang like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  As mentioned before in the beginning of the article, this is wrong! Why? Because that’s actually a language code, so now I’m targeting the Spanish speaking users from everywhere to display them an English page.

  The correct way to do it would be to use both the language and the region codes. For example, if you want to target the English speaking residents from Spain, you would use en-ES:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  But now, obviously, someone might want to abuse this… so a shady thing to do would be to separately target English residents from everywhere, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Notice that I’ve used the same URL each time in the example above. If I had a different version for each region (which isn’t a complete duplicate) then it would make sense:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/spain” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/germany” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/belgium” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/italy” /> etc.

  This is only acceptable if there really are different offers for different regions.

  If all the versions are identical, it’s basically a waste of time and HDD space. It might be alright to target a couple of markets or more, but not all of them. If I want to target all English speakers from all regions, I can simply just specify the language and leave the rest to Google:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> (This targets all English speaking users, regardless of their region or location)

  People will always try to find a way to spam. They will only change titles, for example, leaving the rest of the content in English and they use HREFlang to target all regions. I’ve seen multilanguage sites trying to target all languages, without regions, on the same page, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”it” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a specific example, but I’m sure there are some out there.

  But Google isn’t stupid. Don’t try to rank a single page everywhere using the HREFlang attribute. Not only will this not work, but it would be against Google’s guidelines and might actually hurt your rankings.

  The HREFlang attribute should only be used if you truly have something unique/specific to display to that audience, in that language and in that region.

  Fonts and Diacritics

  Fonts can always be a problem when translating a website. You have to make sure that your current font supports all the special characters in the language you’re translating the site to. Otherwise they can mess up the web design by displaying a default font only for the missing characters and will usually look horrible! Something like this:

  “When the utilized font doesn’t contain a specific character, the software will use another font for it.”

  A good thing to look for is what happens on your mobile device. Sometimes, the characters display properly on your desktop but fail to display correctly on mobile devices. Also, your computer might display the font properly if it has it installed, but other computers might not. Using your mobile device to test this is a good idea.

  Usually it’s a font implementation issue, so make sure you check with your web designer before deciding to replace the font completely.

  Neglecting Social Media

  Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore social media. If you went through all the effort of translating the soon to be multilanguage websites, you might as well put in some effort into promoting it. If you’ve already registered different social media accounts for other countries, put them to good use by posting relevant content there as well.

  Keep in mind that in some countries, different social media platforms are popular. For example, don’t spend time trying to promote your website on Twitter in East European countries for instance. (I can tell you for a fact that people don’t really use the platform). On the other side, in other countries, Facebook doesn’t even exist (China).

  Things also vary depending on the niche you’re in. Tech images and news don’t work well on Pinterest, but cooking recipes and healthy lifestyle/motivational messages do. Thing is, your target audience might be in different places.

  Having an active social media account is a sign of authority. It means the brand is real and, most importantly, alive. It will help you gain the traction you need in order to rank well in Google with the translated version.

  Conclusion

  A multilingual website with properly performed international SEO is definitely something not easy to set up but, hopefully, this article helped you understand how to avoid the most common HREFlang mistakes if you’re planning to translate your website.

  Make sure you don’t set up the hreflang meta tags wrong or you will create more issues than not adding them at all. If you’re on a custom platform or you’re using a custom website builder and want to make sure your implementation is correct, you can try Aleyda Solis’ Tool. Use it to generate the correct HREFlang tags and then add them or compare them to your current ones. Remember, they need to be in your <head> section.

  Keep in mind that your business website is alwaays better off if it’s manually translated by a professional. When the user changes the language from the language switcher, send them to the right page or make it clear that there is no translation available. Don’t trust translation plugins out of the box and make sure you check how they implement everything.

  Also, since you’re here, make sure you check out our article about using subdomains vs using subfolders when building multiple website sections. They might come in handy but, long story short, better have domain.com/en than en.domain.com.

  Thanks so much for reading this till the end! If you have any comments, ideas or opinions, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.

The post Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make

The internet gives a business the power to compete on a global level. Gone are the days when your only competitor was the other shop across the road. If you sell your products or services on a website, you have the power to quickly expand beyond your country’s borders, without spending millions of dollars on opening new physical stores.

  But in order to do this, you have to speak their native or preferred language. And, in order to speak their language, you need to translate your website. Apparently, setting up a multi language website is one of the trickiest things in the digital marketing field. International SEO is pretty hard! Beside translating it the right way, you can run into a lot of other technical issues, most of them regarding incorrect indexation and display of the language versions by Google.

    Even more, Google has recently changed the way it displays websites internationally. You can no longer see the results in another country by simply visiting its Google version. Instead, you have to go through the search settings and select the specific country and language. This shows Google’s interest to make search results more relevant by location, so it’s more important than ever to get everything right!

  In this small international SEO guide, we’re going to try to solve some of the more complicated issues regarding multilingual websites and hopefully shed some light on the most common hreflang mistakes and other general multilingual website issues that webmasters make when they start expanding internationally. 

Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

Language Selector Flag URLs

English URLs for Other Languages

Think of Other Search Engines, Too

Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX

Using Automatic Website Translation Software

Not Doing Keyword Research

Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

Not Fully Translating Captchas

Trying to rank an English page everywhere using HREFlang

Fonts and Diacritics

Neglecting Social Media

    Technical Multilingual SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

  Technical issues in multilingual websites are more common on custom builds. It might not always be the webmaster’s fault, but as long as you have the information and leave the problems there, you have no excuse. Here are some of the most common technical problems around the web and how to properly fix them.

  Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

  Oh, the hreflangs!  Studies show that around 75% percent of the hreflang implementations have mistakes in them. To be honest, while I was searching for examples online, many multi lingual websites did not even have the hreflang implemented at all!

  That’s a concern, because not only does that prevent you from ranking high in other countries, but it also dilutes your website’s content, making it seem less relevant in Google’s eyes.

  So what is this hreflang attribute? Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple:

  The hreflang attribute is a way of telling Google “Hey, I have another localized version of my website here, and it’s in this language.”

  Here’s a video from SEJ where Bill Hunt is explaining exactly what HREFlang is and how to use it correctly.

    Of course, if you don’t use it, Google is probably able to figure things out on its own. But multilingual sites that help Google figure things out easier are known to get a boost in rankings! Here’s a good example from SeerInteractive that shows a traffic growth after the hreflang attribute has been correctly implemented:

  Graph from Seer Interactive showing a growth in traffic after correct HrefLang implementation

  Here are the most common mistkes that people do when implementing the hreflang attribute:

  No hreflang attribute: Of course, the first rule would be to have the hreflang annotation in your HTML. As I said, I found many examples that don’t contain the attribute at all. Here’s just one of them:

  Missing hreflang on fbcareers.com

  Although you can clearly see that they offer the website in multiple languages, the hreflang attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML source code:

  Come out, come out, wherever you are! Hello? Mr. Hreflang? Are you here? …

  No self-referencing URL: On Google’s official page about multilanguage websites, it’s clearly stated that you must use a self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang attribute.

  If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself.  For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions. Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

  Here’s an example of a site that is missing the self-referencing hreflang tag.

  The website elcorteingles.es is missing the self referencing Spanish hreflang attribute

  In another example, you can see from the title that the text is in English and that the English hreflang attribute is missing from the page. However, the page clearly indicates the Spanish version of the website.

  Missing self-referencing English hreflang attribute on cricketwireless.com

  What’s even worse about this case is that the link tag containing the Spanish version is static and implemented in the head template of the entire website. This means that every page will have the same hreflang attribute, continuously misleading Google and harming the website.

  Spanish version of the website with self-referencing hreflang but missing English hreflang

  As you can see above, this time we have the self-referencing attribute in place, but we’re now missing the attribute that specifies the English version we saw earlier.

  In this case, the correct implementation would include both versions, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.cricketwireless.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/” />

  To prove that bad implementation won’t get you where you want to be, I selected US as the region in Chrome, Spanish as the language and then I searched for cricketwireless.

  Google shows English version on Spanish search

  As you can see, the result isn’t the desired Spanish subdomain. Although the webmaster did specify the Spanish version, they missed out on the other rules. I performed this search in the Spanish region as well, and the Google search results were the same.

  So if you want your website to rank well across all regions in all languages, make sure you have your hreflang return tags set up, so that Google can figure out which web pages are linked to one another.

  Not in header: If your hreflang attribute return tags aren’t found in the header, Google will basically analyze the entire page any try to figure things out on its own before realizing the answer was right under its nose. Make sure you have it between your opening and closing head tags.

  A hreflang attribute specifying the French version of a website should look like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/fr/” />

  It’s similar to the link tags that insert JavaScript or CSS files. You can also use a sitemap or a HTTP header for non-HTML files. However, the link tag in the <head> section of your website is the recommended version.

  Here’s a really weird implementation, where the tags are outside the head section and inside a <li> tag instead of a <link> one. Strange and interesting, but definitely not the right way to do it.

  Strange language implementation on semver.org

  Don’t do that! Use the link tag as mentioned above!

  Relative URLs: Google can misinterpret relative URLs, so make sure you make them absolute (https://yoursite.com/specific-page instead of just /specific-page/). If the page is a 404 or a relative URL, there might be issues in the overall indexing of your language version.

  I couldn’t find another example, but you can take a look at the example above from semver.org, where the URLs in the already badly implemented hreflang are relative (/lang/ar) instead of absolute.

  The correct implementation in this case would be <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://semver.org/lang/ar/” />.

  It doesn’t point to a specific page: Each page should point to the specific counterpart in another language, not the entire foreign language version. I couldn’t find another example, but we can use a previous one. Because there is a single hreflang attribute on the whole website, different pages actually point to the root of that language version, regardless of the page or language version you’re on.

  Specific page hreflang attribute points to root of language version

  If you implement a non-dynamic link tag in the header template of your website, all pages will have the same HREFlang. This is a bad idea!

  In some cases, such as this one, you’re better off not having the hreflang attribute at all rather than having it implemented incorrectly.

  The correct implementation in this case would be https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/apps-and-services.html with a rel=”alternate” attribute to https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/ayuda/27g/aplicaciones-y-servicios.html.

  Also, remember that it should have a self-referencing hreflang attribute to itself.

  Incorrect language / country codes: The language code is very often misspelled. Many times, webmasters and web developers use the country code instead of the language code. Here are some official Google insights:

  Official Google statement about country codes in the hreflang attribute

  So, normally, you have to put the language code, not the country code. The country code is optional and can be added to target specific languages in specific regions. For example, you could target the Spanish speaking audience in the US, or the English speaking audience in France. Is this useful?

  I don’t know… let’s say that some people from UK are visiting Italy, and they want to buy some souvenirs. They don’t know any Italian, so they type “buy souvenirs in Venice” in Google. There you go: you just have an English speaking target audience in an Italian region.

  The full list of language codes can be found here, and the full optional list of country codes can be found here.

  No x-default attribute for language pick page: Google recommends using one more tag, placed after all the other languages, to specify the language selection page, if there is one. For example, if the homepage just presents a list of languages to choose from, that would be the x-default language version.

  In the following case, you can see that the homepage of nunnauuni.com is a language selection page. The page is well set up, redirecting users on their second visit accordingly. Although the site has all the other language attributes, including the self-referencing one, it’s missing the x-default tag which specifies the general language selection page.

  Missing x-default tag on nunnauuni.com

  The homepage is also missing all the other tags. Instead, it should include them and also have a self-referencing x-default tag. The correct code to be added after the language list in this case is <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://nunnauuni.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />.

  If you’re using 301’s to geo-redirect users by IP, you can specify the default version in the HTTP header.  To do this in WordPress, you will need to use an HTTP Headers Plugin. The code, however, is a little bit different: Link: http://www.example.es; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es-ES”.

  Untranslated pages hreflang to Homepage: This is a big issue, especially if your Homepage is an important page for your website. This happens a lot mostly because of how the hreflang metatags were implemented, generally as result of a plugin.

  Most plugin seem to have this issue. If a page or blog post isn’t translated, the plugin doesn’t really know what to add to the hreflang link attribute so it just adds the homepage or a “/” which can be interpreted as a relative URL for the homepage.

  Polylang, the translation plugin of my choice when it comes to multi language websites on WordPress doesn’t seem to have this issue. You can set it up to not display the wrong hreflang attribute when the page is untranslated. You should also remove any internal links that change language from the menu if there aren’t any translated versions available.

  Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

  People still don’t understand what the canonical tag does. They have a vague idea about it, but many times use it the wrong way. In a nutshell, here’s what the canonical tag actually does:

  The rel=”canonical” tag tells search engines what page to display in their results pages.

  To better understand the tag, think of it like this: if you have 10 web pages about the same subject, they will start competing with each other in the search engines. This confuses Google, so you can use the canonical tag to help it figure things out, and point to the exact page you prefer being shown in the search engines.

  The canonical tag should always be a self-referencing one, meaning page A should point to itself, except when you want it to display something else instead of page A in the SERPS. Having a self-referencing canonical tag will help you remove any risk of duplicate content issues generated by dynamic parameters, such as ?replytocomm or eCommerce filters.

  The canonical tag works! I’ll share a story. Some time ago, I published a post on my personal blog, which was syndicated by another publisher. I didn’t manage to get it indexed on my blog and, because the other publisher was more popular, Google indexed their article first. So, in a couple of weeks, they happily ranked in the top 5 with my article. I contacted them, politely asked for them to add the canonical tag and in about a week, Google picked it up and started displaying my page instead.

  Don’t try to trick Google into displaying just a landing page or some strange page that doesn’t actually serve the user’s intent. It won’t work and you can risk getting penalized.

  Getting back to the multililanguage websites, the canonical tag should be self-referencing the page it’s on, unless otherwise specifically desired . A common error is this:

  The wrong way to do it is: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical URL to it’s English counterpart, www.youtwebsite.com/fashion-show/.

  If you combine this with an HREFlang attribute, then you’re basically fooling Google around, telling it to go from EN to FR and then back from FR to EN again.

  A good implementation would be: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical tag pointing to either www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ (itself) or, if desired, www.yourwebsite.fr/some-other-french-page/.

  Never use the rel=”alternate” hreflang to solve duplicate content issues, as this is not its purpose. It will only tell Google to show that version of the page for a different location and language in a browser.

  Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

  I was discussing this recently with someone at a meeting. One of his clients insisted that the English homepage on his site was displaying in French by default, instead of English. The reason? His browser was in French, so the main English page was automatically redirected by a WordPress plugin.

  Now Matt Cutts said in his cloaking video that geo-redirect isn’t something to worry about. He also says that users coming from France or a French speaking location will be happy to get their content displayed directly in French.

    However, keep in mind that although you can send users from France to the French version, you can’t guarantee that everyone in France uses a French IP or has their browser in French. 

Many people use their browsers in English, for example. This means that they will constantly be redirected, no matter what they do. Also, with VPNs becoming more and more popular, IP isn’t a fool-proof metric either.

  Setting geo-redirection on its own doesn’t help you rank better in other languages. In my opinion, the best way to direct the user to the right version is using the HREFlang attribute to properly display the desired page in their search engine. Of course, if they use a different IP with VPNs, the search engine will still display the wrong version, thinking the user lives somewhere else, but any user using a VPN should be aware of that.

  English and French

  If someone is going to access your business website directly, it will either access it through the right country URL, or through the homepage. If you have a clearly visible language selector in place, I consider any user to be smart enough these days to be able to get to the right version.

  In case your website already provides automatic redirection and you choose to keep it, make sure you set the x-default hreflang attribute as well. This will tell Google where the language selection page is and it will display that whenever it is unsure of the user’s true location or preferred language.

Make sure that the language selection flags are clearly visible, on desktop and on mobile.

  Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

  Another common issue when translating pages is to forget the no-index tag on, or leave it there on purpose. I can understand forgetting it, as you do not want Google to index your alternate language version of the website before it’s finished.

  But if you leave it on purpose, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve read some rumors about people being afraid of duplicate content penalties. Although there is no such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand the issue.

  You might be thinking “How could someone think French and English versions are duplicates?” At first, I thought so myself, but then I realized it must be about the same language displayed in different locations. For example, en-us and en-gb.

  Although you could simply use the language selector to display the same version in both regions, it can be useful to have separate versions.

  This way, you can have different sliders, products or offers in different regions. For example, if you sell T-shirts with messages, some texts might fit the US and only some might fit the UK.

  If you do have multiple English versions, using the no-index tag is a bad idea if you have all the HREFlang annotations set up properly. If you reference a version with HREFlang and then use no-index on it, you’re basically telling Google “Hey check this out over here!” and then “Ha ha, just joking, nothing to crawl here, go away!”

  Don’t joke with Google!

  Language Selector Flag URLs

  One common mistake that happens is having a static implementation of the language switcher button or flag. Users expect to see what they searched for. If you’re in a subpage of the website, changing the language shouldn’t take the user to the homepage of that language. At least, not all the time. It should take them, preferably, to that specific page, in the desired language.

  The problem here is that it’s not always that easy to do. You can  have, for example, 10 pages in English, but only 8 are translated in French. What do you do with the other two? Well, you have three options:

  Option one is to send the user to the most relevant French page that you have regarding that subject 

Option two is to send them to the homepage

Option three is to specify to the user that there is no translated version for that specific page

  Option three is the worst from my point of view, because users will most likely leave the website on the spot when they receive the message. It basically says “This website doesn’t have what you’re looking for.”

  The homepage option isn’t such a big deal on a small website, where you only have About Us, Services and Contact Us. People will figure out easily on what page they were previously. It can still affect the user experience a little, but things will be fine.

  However, if you have a blog or a huge website with thousands of pages and articles, the users will have a very hard time finding what article they were on if you send them to the homepage.

  A good example of a language selection implementation that always sends you to the homepage can be viewed on clinlife.com.

    English URLs for Other Languages

  Since we’ve just spotted the untranslated URL structure in the example above, let’s talk about this. Why not translate all your foreign URLs? I mean, we all know that using some keywords in the URL can help you rank better. Obviously, ‘studies’ will be less helpful in Brasil than ‘estudos’. We know the content isn’t dynamic on a static URL structure because the URL parent changes (/brpt#/ to /caen#/).

If you’re going to translate your website, make sure you translate your URLs as well.

This is often overlooked in eCommerce website builders and even search engine optimization tools and there are many examples that can be given. Here’s one from an eCommerce website:

  No url translation on antrhropologie.com

  And here’s another online store making the same mistake:

  No URL translation on thenorthface.com

  Think of Other Search Engines, Too

  Google here and Google there, but the truth is that in other countries, Google isn’t the most popular search engine! Russia, for example, uses Yandex, and China has Baidu. Different countries also use different search engines in different proportions.

  Source: www.martinkovac.com

  Google is censored in some countries, so think twice before spending time to translate the content for those regions. Also, consider that other search engines don’t have the same exact algorithms as Google does. It’s good to know, for example, that Yandex doesn’t use links in it’s algorithm.

  Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

  This is one of the things that always keeps international competitors far behind the local ones. Google really appreciates local/regional links, so if you have a website translation in Spanish, you’re better off having links from .es toplevel domains than having links from .com toplevel domains.

  Local competitors know this and, even more, it’s far easier for them to acquire .es links than it is for an international competitor. They don’t only have to rely on link building, because they can network and attend meetings, meet new people and promote their websites in other ways.

  It’s also very common for an international website not to focus on it’s translated versions. But since you’ve spent so much time translating it, shouldn’t you also focus on promoting it?

  If we take one of our previous examples and feed it to the Site Explorer, we can see the discrepancy:

  Screenshot from the cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, showing the discrepancy between links

  What’s even worse about that 0.7% is that all those .fr links are pointing to the English language version of the website:

  Regional backlinks points to wrong version

  Call it local SEO if you want, but focus on building some regional backlinks and make sure you build them to the right version.

  Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX 

  Although user experience issues can still be attributed to lack of knowledge, content issues probably have more to do with unawareness. Anyway, here’s what you should be keeping an eye on:

  Using Automatic Website Translation Software

  Let’s start with something really common… We all know that Google Translate doesn’t always get it right. It actually… gets it wrong lots of the time (for now).

  Most people use this technique to get English content into other languages (usually with Google Translator or an Android / iOS App) , because search engines aren’t too good at detecting automatically translated content. Sure, Google might not be as good at understanding languages other than English, but users still are. And since UX is such an important metric, it’s a waste of money and time trying to do this at scale.

    Human translations are definitely better, as long as they actually know both languages well (and one of them is preferably a native language). Although manually translated content is more expensive, providing bad language translation to users will affect your brand and probably the chance to ever hit that target market in the future. If you want to build something solid, get a professional human translator.

  Not Doing Keyword Research

  Don’t just translate the keywords and expect to get results from it. A professional translator can’t do everything. It’s a good start, but you might also need to contact someone that knows both the native language and search engine optimization to be able to properly identify and add the right phrases in your content.

  It would also be irrelevant to compare numbers, as English is far more used than Italian for example, so the English numbers will always be higher. However, I hope you get the idea that people search different things in different countries, but want the same product. Do the research!

  Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

  If you really want to have an impact, you have to study the culture a little bit. A translator might help, but you might need more than this. You’ll need a regional, someone who’s actually lived there and can provide some insights. Of course, this is at a higher level, but it’s worth doing it if you have the resources.

  A good easy example to start with are the date formats. Some countries use dd/mm/yy, while others use mm/dd/yy. Another good example would be showing an article about pork meat in a Muslim region. Not a very bright idea. Not only will it be completely irrelevant, but it will also make a lot of people feel bad.

  Not Fully Translating Captchas

  This is something common. Many people these days use the Google Recaptcha, but very few actually translate it. The result is something like this:

  All the content in French, but the captcha is in English

  Now for you this isn’t a problem, since you’re reading this article. But for someone else who doesn’t speak English, it could be. If they don’t know what to do, they won’t be able to contact you.

  The webmasters did take action against this by displaying the following message: Cochez la case “I’m not a robot” et suivez les instructions. Ce service nous protège des spammeurs.

  Problem solved, right? Not quite! Does this look familiar?

  Second occasional verification. This can also be different each time.

  Yeah… this can be a little frustrating.

  No captcha translation makes users unhappy

  But the fix for it is actually very easy. Recaptcha works using a JavaScript file. That JS file can be translated with a ULR parameter. If the plugin you’re using doesn’t allow this, you can search the code for the following script:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js

  Then, just add ?hl=xx after the URL, where xx is the language code, same as with the HREFlang annotations (fr,es,en). To translate it in French, for example, it should look like this:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?hl=fr

  Trying to rank an English page EVERYWHERE using HREFlang

  I’m not talking about people that are trying to target English websites to English speakers from Spain, but people that are trying to target English websites everywhere, regardless of their language or location. This could either be done with intention or by mistake.

  Let’s start with the mistake. Say I know for a fact that people in Spain search for my product in English. I want to target that market so I add HREFlang like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  As mentioned before in the beginning of the article, this is wrong! Why? Because that’s actually a language code, so now I’m targeting the Spanish speaking users from everywhere to display them an English page.

  The correct way to do it would be to use both the language and the region codes. For example, if you want to target the English speaking residents from Spain, you would use en-ES:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” />

  But now, obviously, someone might want to abuse this… so a shady thing to do would be to separately target English residents from everywhere, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Notice that I’ve used the same URL each time in the example above. If I had a different version for each region (which isn’t a complete duplicate) then it would make sense:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-ES” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/spain” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-DE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/germany” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-BE” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/belgium” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-IT” href=”https://yourwebsite.com/italy” /> etc.

  This is only acceptable if there really are different offers for different regions.

  If all the versions are identical, it’s basically a waste of time and HDD space. It might be alright to target a couple of markets or more, but not all of them. If I want to target all English speakers from all regions, I can simply just specify the language and leave the rest to Google:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> (This targets all English speaking users, regardless of their region or location)

  People will always try to find a way to spam. They will only change titles, for example, leaving the rest of the content in English and they use HREFlang to target all regions. I’ve seen multilanguage sites trying to target all languages, without regions, on the same page, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”it” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourwebsite.com” /> etc.

  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a specific example, but I’m sure there are some out there.

  But Google isn’t stupid. Don’t try to rank a single page everywhere using the HREFlang attribute. Not only will this not work, but it would be against Google’s guidelines and might actually hurt your rankings.

  The HREFlang attribute should only be used if you truly have something unique/specific to display to that audience, in that language and in that region.

  Fonts and Diacritics

  Fonts can always be a problem when translating a website. You have to make sure that your current font supports all the special characters in the language you’re translating the site to. Otherwise they can mess up the web design by displaying a default font only for the missing characters and will usually look horrible! Something like this:

  “When the utilized font doesn’t contain a specific character, the software will use another font for it.”

  A good thing to look for is what happens on your mobile device. Sometimes, the characters display properly on your desktop but fail to display correctly on mobile devices. Also, your computer might display the font properly if it has it installed, but other computers might not. Using your mobile device to test this is a good idea.

  Usually it’s a font implementation issue, so make sure you check with your web designer before deciding to replace the font completely.

  Neglecting Social Media

  Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore social media. If you went through all the effort of translating the soon to be multilanguage websites, you might as well put in some effort into promoting it. If you’ve already registered different social media accounts for other countries, put them to good use by posting relevant content there as well.

  Keep in mind that in some countries, different social media platforms are popular. For example, don’t spend time trying to promote your website on Twitter in East European countries for instance. (I can tell you for a fact that people don’t really use the platform). On the other side, in other countries, Facebook doesn’t even exist (China).

  Things also vary depending on the niche you’re in. Tech images and news don’t work well on Pinterest, but cooking recipes and healthy lifestyle/motivational messages do. Thing is, your target audience might be in different places.

  Having an active social media account is a sign of authority. It means the brand is real and, most importantly, alive. It will help you gain the traction you need in order to rank well in Google with the translated version.

  Conclusion

  A multilingual website with properly performed international SEO is definitely something not easy to set up but, hopefully, this article helped you understand how to avoid the most common HREFlang mistakes if you’re planning to translate your website.

  Make sure you don’t set up the hreflang meta tags wrong or you will create more issues than not adding them at all. If you’re on a custom platform or you’re using a custom website builder and want to make sure your implementation is correct, you can try Aleyda Solis’ Tool. Use it to generate the correct HREFlang tags and then add them or compare them to your current ones. Remember, they need to be in your <head> section.

  Keep in mind that your business website is alwaays better off if it’s manually translated by a professional. When the user changes the language from the language switcher, send them to the right page or make it clear that there is no translation available. Don’t trust translation plugins out of the box and make sure you check how they implement everything.

  Also, since you’re here, make sure you check out our article about using subdomains vs using subfolders when building multiple website sections. They might come in handy but, long story short, better have domain.com/en than en.domain.com.

  Thanks so much for reading this till the end! If you have any comments, ideas or opinions, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.

The post Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

[philipfloyd]

Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make

The internet gives a business the power to compete on a global level. Gone are the days when your only competitor was the other shop across the road. If you sell your products or services on a website, you have the power to quickly expand beyond your country’s borders, without spending millions of dollars on opening new physical stores.

  But in order to do this, you have to speak their language. And, in order to speak their language, you need to translate your website. Apparently, setting up a multi language website is one of the trickiest things in the digital marketing field. Beside translating it the right way, you can run into a lot of other technical issues, most of them regarding incorrect indexation and display of the language versions by Google.

    Even more, Google has recently changed the way it displays websites internationally. You can no longer see the results in another country by simply visiting its Google version. Instead, you have to go through the search settings and select the country and language. This shows Google’s interest to make results more relevant by location, so it’s more important than ever to get everything right!

  In this article, we’re going to try to solve some of the more complicated issues regarding multilingual websites and hopefully shed some light on the most common mistakes that webmasters make when they start expanding internationally.

Technical SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

Language Selector Flag URLs

English URLs for Other Languages

Think of Other Search Engines, Too

Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX

Using Automatic Website Translation Software

Not Doing Keyword Research

Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

Not Fully Translating Captchas

Using HREFlang, but All Content Is in English

Fonts and Diacritics

Neglecting Social Media

    Technical SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

  Technical issues in multilingual websites are more common on custom builds. It might not always be the webmaster’s fault, but as long as you have the information and leave the problems there, you have no excuse. Here are some of the most common technical problems around the web and how to properly fix them.

  Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

  Oh, the hreflangs!  Studies show that around 75% percent of the hreflang implementations have mistakes in them. To be honest, while I was searching for examples online, many multi lingual websites did not even have the hreflang implemented at all!

  That’s a concern, because not only does that prevent you from ranking high in other countries, but it also dilutes your website’s content, making it seem less relevant in Google’s eyes.

  So what is this hreflang attribute? Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple:

  The hreflang attribute is a way of telling Google “Hey, I have another version of my website here, and it’s in this language.”

  Here’s a video from SEJ where Bill Hunt is explaining exactly what HREFlang is and how to use it correctly.

    Of course, if you don’t use it, Google is probably able to figure things out on its own. But websites that help Google figure things out easier are known to get a boost in rankings! Here’s a good example from SeerInteractive that shows a traffic growth after the hreflang attribute has been correctly implemented:

  Graph from Seer Interactive showing a growth in traffic after correct HrefLang implementation

  Here are the most common mistkes that people do when implementing the hreflang attribute:

  No hreflang attribute: Of course, the first rule would be to have the hreflang annotation in your HTML. As I said, I found many examples that don’t contain the attribute at all. Here’s just one of them:

  Missing hreflang on fbcareers.com

  Although you can clearly see that they offer the website in multiple languages, the hreflang attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML source code:

  Come out, come out, wherever you are! Hello? Mr. Hreflang? Are you here? …

  No self-referencing URL: On Google’s official page about multilingual websites, it’s clearly stated that you must use a self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang attribute.

  If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself.  For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions. Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

  Here’s an example of a site that is missing the self-referencing hreflang tag.

  The website elcorteingles.es is missing the self referencing Spanish hreflang attribute

  In another example, you can see from the title that the text is in English and that the English hreflang attribute is missing from the page. However, the page clearly indicates the Spanish version of the website.

  Missing self-referencing English hreflang attribute on cricketwireless.com

  What’s even worse about this case is that the link tag containing the Spanish version is static and implemented in the head template of the entire website. This means that every page will have the same hreflang attribute, continuously misleading Google and harming the website.

  Spanish version of the website with self-referencing hreflang but missing English hreflang

  As you can see above, this time we have the self-referencing attribute in place, but we’re now missing the attribute that specifies the English version we saw earlier.

  In this case, the correct implementation would include both versions, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.cricketwireless.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/” />

  To prove that bad implementation won’t get you where you want to be, I selected US as the region in Chrome, Spanish as the language and then I searched for cricketwireless.

  Google shows English version on Spanish search

  As you can see, the result isn’t the desired Spanish subdomain. Although the webmaster did specify the Spanish version, they missed out on the other rules. I performed this search in the Spanish region as well, and the results were the same.

  Not in header: If your hreflang attribute isn’t found in the header, Google will basically analyze the entire page any try to figure things out on its own before realizing the answer was right under its nose. Make sure you have it between your opening and closing head tags.

  A hreflang attribute specifying the French version of a website should look like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/fr/” />

  It’s similar to the link tags that insert JavaScript or CSS files. You can also use a sitemap or a HTTP header for non-HTML files. However, the link tag in the <head> section of your website is the recommended version.

  Here’s a really weird implementation, where the tags are outside the head section and inside a <li> tag instead of a <link> one. Strange and interesting, but definitely not the right way to do it.

  Strange language implementation on semver.org

  Don’t do that! Use the link tag as mentioned above!

  Relative URLs: Google can misinterpret relative URLs, so make sure you make them absolute (https://yoursite.com/specific-page instead of just /specific-page/). If the page is a 404 or a relative URL, there might be issues in the overall indexing of your language version.

  I couldn’t find another example, but you can take a look at the example above from semver.org, where the URLs in the already badly implemented hreflang are relative (/lang/ar) instead of absolute.

  The correct implementation in this case would be <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://semver.org/lang/ar/” />.

  It doesn’t point to a specific page: Each page should point to the specific counterpart in another language, not the entire foreign language version. I couldn’t find another example, but we can use a previous one. Because there is a single hreflang attribute on the whole website, different pages actually point to the root of that language version, regardless of the page or language version you’re on.

  Specific page hreflang attribute points to root of language version

  If you implement a non-dynamic link tag in the header template of your website, all pages will have the same HREFlang. This is a bad idea!

  In some cases, such as this one, you’re better off not having the hreflang attribute at all rather than having it implemented incorrectly.

  The correct implementation in this case would be https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/apps-and-services.html with a rel=”alternate” attribute to https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/ayuda/27g/aplicaciones-y-servicios.html.

  Also, remember that it should have a self-referencing hreflang attribute to itself.

  Incorrect language / country codes: The language code is very often misspelled. Many times, webmasters and web developers use the country code instead of the language code. Here are some official Google insights:

  Official Google statement about country codes in the hreflang attribute

  So, normally, you have to put the language code, not the country code. The country code is optional and can be added to target specific languages in specific regions. For example, you could target the Spanish speaking audience in the US, or the English speaking audience in France. Is this useful?

  I don’t know… let’s say that some people from UK are visiting Italy, and they want to buy some souvenirs. They don’t know any Italian, so they type “buy souvenirs in Venice” in Google. There you go: you just have an English speaking target audience in an Italian region.

  The full list of language codes can be found here, and the full optional list of country codes can be found here.

  No x-default attribute for language pick page: Google recommends using one more tag, placed after all the other languages, to specify the language selection page, if there is one. For example, if the homepage just presents a list of languages to choose from, that would be the x-default version.

  In the following case, you can see that the homepage of nunnauuni.com is a language selection page. The page is well set up, redirecting users on their second visit accordingly. Although the site has all the other language attributes, including the self-referencing one, it’s missing the x-default tag which specifies the general language selection page.

  Missing x-default tag on nunnauuni.com

  The homepage is also missing all the other tags. Instead, it should include them and also have a self-referencing x-default tag. The correct code to be added after the language list in this case is <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://nunnauuni.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />.

  If you’re using 301’s to geo-redirect users by IP, you can specify the default version in the HTTP header.  To do this in WordPress, you will need to use an HTTP Headers Plugin. The code, however, is a little bit different: Link: http://www.example.es; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es-ES”.

  Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

  People still don’t understand what the canonical tag does. They have a vague idea about it, but many times use it the wrong way. In a nutshell, here’s what the canonical tag actually does:

  The rel=”canonical” tag tells search engines what page to display in their results pages.

  To better understand the tag, think of it like this: if you have 10 pages about the same subject, they will start competing with each other in the search engines. This confuses Google, so you can use the canonical tag to help it figure things out, and point to the exact page you prefer being shown in the search engines.

  The canonical tag should always be a self-referencing one, meaning page A should point to itself, except when you want it to display something else instead of page A in the SERPS. Having a self-referencing canonical tag will help you remove any risk of duplicate content issues generated by dynamic parameters, such as ?replytocomm or eCommerce filters.

  The canonical tag works! I’ll share a story. Some time ago, I published a post on my personal blog, which was syndicated by another publisher. I didn’t manage to get it indexed on my blog and, because the other publisher was more popular, Google indexed their article first. So, in a couple of weeks, they happily ranked in the top 5 with my article. I contacted them, politely asked for them to add the canonical tag and in about a week, Google picked it up and started displaying my page instead.

  Don’t try to trick Google into displaying just a landing page or some strange page that doesn’t actually serve the user’s intent. It won’t work and you can risk getting penalized.

  Getting back to the multilingual websites, the canonical tag should be self-referencing the page it’s on, unless otherwise specifically desired . A common error is this:

  The wrong way to do it is: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical URL to it’s English counterpart, www.youtwebsite.com/fashion-show/.

  If you combine this with an HREFlang attribute, then you’re basically fooling Google around, telling it to go from EN to FR and then back from FR to EN again.

  A good implementation would be: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical tag pointing to either www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ (itself) or, if desired, www.yourwebsite.fr/some-other-french-page/.

  Never use the rel=”alternate” hreflang to solve duplicate content issues, as this is not its purpose. It will only tell Google to show that version of the page for a different location and language in a browser.

  Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

  I was discussing this recently with someone at a meeting. One of his clients insisted that the English homepage on his site was displaying in French by default, instead of English. The reason? His browser was in French, so the main English page was automatically redirected by a WordPress plugin.

  Now Matt Cutts said in his cloaking video that geo-redirect isn’t something to worry about. He also says that users coming from France or a French speaking location will be happy to get their content displayed directly in French.

    However, keep in mind that although you can send users from France to the French version, you can’t guarantee that everyone in France uses a French IP or has their browser in French. 

Many people use their browsers in English, for example. This means that they will constantly be redirected, no matter what they do. Also, with VPNs becoming more and more popular, IP isn’t a fool-proof metric either.

  Setting geo-redirection on its own doesn’t help you rank better in other languages. In my opinion, the best way to direct the user to the right version is using the HREFlang attribute to properly display the desired page in their search engine. Of course, if they use a different IP with VPNs, the search engine will still display the wrong version, thinking the user lives somewhere else, but any user using a VPN should be aware of that.

    If someone is going to access your website directly, it will either access it through the right country URL, or through the homepage. If you have a clearly visible language selector in place, I consider any user to be smart enough these days to be able to get to the right version.

  In case your website already provides automatic redirection and you choose to keep it, make sure you set the x-default hreflang attribute as well. This will tell Google where the language selection page is and it will display that whenever it is unsure of the user’s true location or language.

Make sure that the language selection flags are clearly visible, on desktop and on mobile.

  Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

  Another common issue when translating pages is to forget the no-index tag on, or leave it there on purpose. I can understand forgetting it, as you do not want Google to index your alternate language version of the website before it’s finished.

  But if you leave it on purpose, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve read some rumors about people being afraid of duplicate content penalties. Although there is no such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand the issue.

  You might be thinking “How could someone think French and English versions are duplicates?” At first, I thought so myself, but then I realized it must be about the same language displayed in different locations. For example, en-us and en-gb.

Although you could simply use the language selector to display the same version in both regions, it can be useful to have separate versions.

This way, you can have different sliders, products or offers in different regions. For example, if you sell T-shirts with messages, some texts might fit the US and only some might fit the UK.

  If you do have multiple English versions, using the no-index tag is a bad idea if you have all the HREFlang annotations set up properly. If you reference a version with HREFlang and then use no-index on it, you’re basically telling Google “Hey check this out over here!” and then “Ha ha, just joking, nothing to crawl here, go away!”

  Don’t joke with Google!

  Language Selector Flag URLs

  One common mistake that happens is having a static implementation of the language switch button or flag. Users expect to see what they searched for. If you’re in a subpage of the website, changing the language shouldn’t take the user to the homepage of that language. At least, not all the time. It should take them, preferably, to that specific page, in the desired language.

  The problem here is that it’s not always that easy to do. You can  have, for example, 10 pages in English, but only 8 are translated in French. What do you do with the other two? Well, you have three options:

  Option one is to send the user to the most relevant French page that you have regarding that subject 

Option two is to send them to the homepage

Option three is to specify to the user that there is no translated version for that specific page

  Option three is the worst from my point of view, because users will most likely leave the website on the spot when they receive the message. It basically says “This website doesn’t have what you’re looking for.”

  The homepage option isn’t such a big deal on a small website, where you only have About Us, Services and Contact Us. People will figure out easily on what page they were previously. It can still affect the user experience a little, but things will be fine.

  However, if you have a blog or a huge website with thousands of pages and articles, the users will have a very hard time finding what article they were on if you send them to the homepage.

  A good example of a language selection implementation that always sends you to the homepage can be viewed on clinlife.com.

    English URLs for Other Languages

  Since we’ve just spotted the untranslated URL in the example above, let’s talk about this. Why not translate all your foreign URLs? I mean, we all know that using some keywords in the URL can help you rank better. Obviously, ‘studies’ will be less helpful in Brasil than ‘estudos’. We know the content isn’t dynamic on a static URL because the URL parent changes (/brpt#/ to /caen#/).

If you’re going to translate your website, make sure you translate your URLs as well.

This is often overlooked and there are many examples that can be given. Here’s one:

  No url translation on antrhropologie.com

  And here’s another one:

  No URL translation on thenorthface.com

    Think of Other Search Engines, Too

  Google here and Google there, but the truth is that in other countries, Google isn’t the most popular search engine! Russia, for example, uses Yandex, and China has Baidu. Different countries also use different search engines in different proportions.

  Source: www.martinkovac.com

  Google is censored in some countries, so think twice before spending time to translate the content for those regions. Also, consider that other search engines don’t have the same exact algorithms as Google does. It’s good to know, for example, that Yandex doesn’t use links in it’s algorithm.

  Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

  This is one of the things that always keeps international competitors far behind the local ones. Google really appreciates local/regional links, so if you have a website translation in Spanish, you’re better off having links from .es domains than having links from .com domains.

  Local competitors know this and, even more, it’s far easier for them to acquire .es links than it is for an international competitor. They don’t only have to rely on building the links, because they can network and attend meetings, meet new people and promote their websites in other ways.

  It’s also very common for an international website not to focus on it’s translated versions. But since you’ve spent so much time translating it, shouldn’t you also focus on promoting it?

  If we take one of our previous examples and feed it to the Site Explorer, we can see the discrepancy:

  Screenshot from the cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, showing the discrepancy between links

  What’s even worse about that 0.7% is that all those .fr links are pointing to the English version of the website:

  Regional backlinks points to wrong version

  Call it local SEO if you want, but focus on building some regional backlinks and make sure you build them to the right version.

  Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX 

  Although user experience issues can still be attributed to lack of knowledge, content issues probably have more to do with unawareness. Anyway, here’s what you should be keeping an eye on:

  Using Automatic Website Translation Software

  Let’s start with something really common… We all know that Google Translate doesn’t always get it right. It actually… gets it wrong lots of the time (for now).

  Most people use this technique to get English content into other languages, because Google isn’t too good at detecting automatically translated content. Sure, Google might not be as good at understanding languages other than English, but users still are. And since UX is such an important metric, it’s a waste of money and time trying to do this at scale.

    Providing bad language translation to users will affect your brand and probably the chance to ever hit that target market in the future. If you want to build something solid, get a professional human translator.

  Not Doing Keyword Research

  Don’t just translate the keywords and expect to get results from it. A professional translator can’t do everything. It’s a good start, but you might also need to contact someone that knows both the native language and SEO to be able to properly identify and add the right phrases in your content.

  It would also be irrelevant to compare numbers, as English is far more used than Italian for example, so the English numbers will always be higher. However, I hope you get the idea that people search different things in different countries, but want the same product. Do the research!

  Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

  If you really want to have an impact, you have to study the culture a little bit. A translator might help, but you might need more than this. You’ll need a regional, someone who’s actually lived there and can provide some insights. Of course, this is at a higher level, but it’s worth doing it if you have the resources.

  A good easy example to start with are the date formats. Some countries use dd/mm/yy, while others use mm/dd/yy. Another good example would be showing an article about pork meat in a Muslim region. Not a very bright idea. Not only will it be completely irrelevant, but it will also make a lot of people feel bad.

  Not Fully Translating Captchas

  This is something common. Many people these days use the Google Recaptcha, but very few actually translate it. The result is something like this:

  All the content in French, but the captcha is in English

  Now for you this isn’t a problem, since you’re reading this article. But for someone else who doesn’t speak English, it could be. If they don’t know what to do, they won’t be able to contact you.

  The webmasters did take action against this by displaying the following message: Cochez la case “I’m not a robot” et suivez les instructions. Ce service nous protège des spammeurs.

  Problem solved, right? Not quite! Does this look familiar?

  Second occasional verification. This can also be different each time.

  Yeah… this can be a little frustrating.

  No captcha translation makes users unhappy

  But the fix for it is actually very easy. Recaptcha works using a JavaScript file. That JS file can be translated with a ULR parameter. If the plugin you’re using doesn’t allow this, you can search the code for the following script:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js

  Then, just add ?hl=xx after the URL, where xx is the language code, same as with the HREFlang annotations (fr,es,en). To translate it in French, for example, it should look like this:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?hl=fr

  Using HREFlang, But All Content Is in English

  On the other hand, there would be websites trying to rank English versions in other language regions. I’m not sure if anyone actually tried this, but there might be a possibility. If this went through your head, don’t try it! Don’t add the HREFlang to try and display your English version of the website in other regions. Google isn’t stupid.

  Not only will this not work, but it would be against Google’s guidelines and might actually hurt your rankings. The HREFlang attribute should only be used if you truly will display the website in the specified language and region.

  Fonts and Diacritics

  Fonts can always be a problem when translating a website. You have to make sure that your current font supports all the special characters in the language you’re translating the site to. Otherwise, they will display using a default font and will usually look horrible!

  “When the utilized font doesn’t contain a specific character, the software will use another font for it.”

  A good thing to look for is what happens on your mobile device. Sometimes, the characters display properly on your desktop but fail to display correctly on mobile devices. Also, your computer might display the font properly if it has it installed, but other computers might not. Using your mobile device to test this is a good idea.

  Usually it’s a font implementation issue, so make sure you check with your web designer before deciding to replace the font completely.

  Neglecting Social Media

  Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore social media. If you went through all the effort of translating the websites, you might as well put in some effort into promoting it. If you’ve already registered different social media accounts for other countries, put them to good use by posting relevant content there as well.

  Keep in mind that in some countries, different social media platforms are popular. For example, don’t spend time trying to promote your website on Twitter in East European countries for instance. (I can tell you for a fact that people don’t really use the platform). On the other side, in other countries, Facebook doesn’t even exist (China).

  Things also vary depending on the niche you’re in. Tech images and news don’t work well on Pinterest, but cooking recipes and healthy lifestyle/motivational messages do. Thing is, your target audience might be in different places.

  Having an active social media account is a sign of authority. It means the brand is real and, most importantly, alive. It will help you gain the traction you need in order to rank well in Google with the translated version.

  Conclusion

  A multilingual website is definitely something not easy to get set up right but, hopefully, this article helped you understand how to avoid the most common HREFlang mistakes if you’re planning to translate your website. Also, since you’re here, make sure you check out our article about using subdomains vs using subfolders when building multiple website sections.

  If you’re on a custom platform or you’re using a custom website builder and want to make sure your implementation is correct, you can try Aleyda Solis’ Tool. Use it to generate the correct HREFlang tags and then add them or compare them to your current ones. Remember, they need to be in your <head> section.

  Thanks so much for reading this till the end! If you have any comments, ideas or opinions, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.

The post Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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[wjwilliams29]

Vital Hreflang & Multi Language Website Mistakes That Most Webmasters Make

The internet gives a business the power to compete on a global level. Gone are the days when your only competitor was the other shop across the road. If you sell your products or services on a website, you have the power to quickly expand beyond your country’s borders, without spending millions of dollars on opening new physical stores.

  But in order to do this, you have to speak their language. And, in order to speak their language, you need to translate your website. Apparently, setting up a multi language website is one of the trickiest things in the digital marketing field. Beside translating it the right way, you can run into a lot of other technical issues, most of them regarding incorrect indexation and display of the language versions by Google.

    Even more, Google has recently changed the way it displays websites internationally. You can no longer see the results in another country by simply visiting its Google version. Instead, you have to go through the search settings and select the country and language. This shows Google’s interest to make results more relevant by location, so it’s more important than ever to get everything right!

  In this article, we’re going to try to solve some of the more complicated issues regarding multilingual websites and hopefully shed some light on the most common mistakes that webmasters make when they start expanding internationally.

Technical SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

Language Selector Flag URLs

English URLs for Other Languages

Think of Other Search Engines, Too

Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX

Using Automatic Website Translation Software

Not Doing Keyword Research

Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

Not Fully Translating Captchas

Using HREFlang, but All Content Is in English

Fonts and Diacritics

Neglecting Social Media

    Technical SEO & Hreflang Related Issues

  Technical issues in multilingual websites are more common on custom builds. It might not always be the webmaster’s fault, but as long as you have the information and leave the problems there, you have no excuse. Here are some of the most common technical problems around the web and how to properly fix them.

  Bad Implementation of the rel=”alternate” and hreflang Attributes

  Oh, the hreflangs!  Studies show that around 75% percent of the hreflang implementations have mistakes in them. To be honest, while I was searching for examples online, many multi lingual websites did not even have the hreflang implemented at all!

  That’s a concern, because not only does that prevent you from ranking high in other countries, but it also dilutes your website’s content, making it seem less relevant in Google’s eyes.

  So what is this hreflang attribute? Well, in theory, it’s pretty simple:

  The hreflang attribute is a way of telling Google “Hey, I have another version of my website here, and it’s in this language.”

  Here’s a video from SEJ where Bill Hunt is explaining exactly what HREFlang is and how to use it correctly.

    Of course, if you don’t use it, Google is probably able to figure things out on its own. But websites that help Google figure things out easier are known to get a boost in rankings! Here’s a good example from SeerInteractive that shows a traffic growth after the hreflang attribute has been correctly implemented:

  Graph from Seer Interactive showing a growth in traffic after correct HrefLang implementation

  Here are the most common mistkes that people do when implementing the hreflang attribute:

  No hreflang attribute: Of course, the first rule would be to have the hreflang annotation in your HTML. As I said, I found many examples that don’t contain the attribute at all. Here’s just one of them:

  Missing hreflang on fbcareers.com

  Although you can clearly see that they offer the website in multiple languages, the hreflang attribute is nowhere to be found in the HTML source code:

  Come out, come out, wherever you are! Hello? Mr. Hreflang? Are you here? …

  No self-referencing URL: On Google’s official page about multilingual websites, it’s clearly stated that you must use a self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang attribute.

  If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself.  For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions. Google https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

  Here’s an example of a site that is missing the self-referencing hreflang tag.

  The website elcorteingles.es is missing the self referencing Spanish hreflang attribute

  In another example, you can see from the title that the text is in English and that the English hreflang attribute is missing from the page. However, the page clearly indicates the Spanish version of the website.

  Missing self-referencing English hreflang attribute on cricketwireless.com

  What’s even worse about this case is that the link tag containing the Spanish version is static and implemented in the head template of the entire website. This means that every page will have the same hreflang attribute, continuously misleading Google and harming the website.

  Spanish version of the website with self-referencing hreflang but missing English hreflang

  As you can see above, this time we have the self-referencing attribute in place, but we’re now missing the attribute that specifies the English version we saw earlier.

  In this case, the correct implementation would include both versions, like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”https://www.cricketwireless.com/” />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/” />

  To prove that bad implementation won’t get you where you want to be, I selected US as the region in Chrome, Spanish as the language and then I searched for cricketwireless.

  Google shows English version on Spanish search

  As you can see, the result isn’t the desired Spanish subdomain. Although the webmaster did specify the Spanish version, they missed out on the other rules. I performed this search in the Spanish region as well, and the results were the same.

  Not in header: If your hreflang attribute isn’t found in the header, Google will basically analyze the entire page any try to figure things out on its own before realizing the answer was right under its nose. Make sure you have it between your opening and closing head tags.

  A hreflang attribute specifying the French version of a website should look like this:

  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/fr/” />

  It’s similar to the link tags that insert JavaScript or CSS files. You can also use a sitemap or a HTTP header for non-HTML files. However, the link tag in the <head> section of your website is the recommended version.

  Here’s a really weird implementation, where the tags are outside the head section and inside a <li> tag instead of a <link> one. Strange and interesting, but definitely not the right way to do it.

  Strange language implementation on semver.org

  Don’t do that! Use the link tag as mentioned above!

  Relative URLs: Google can misinterpret relative URLs, so make sure you make them absolute (https://yoursite.com/specific-page instead of just /specific-page/). If the page is a 404 or a relative URL, there might be issues in the overall indexing of your language version.

  I couldn’t find another example, but you can take a look at the example above from semver.org, where the URLs in the already badly implemented hreflang are relative (/lang/ar) instead of absolute.

  The correct implementation in this case would be <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://semver.org/lang/ar/” />.

  It doesn’t point to a specific page: Each page should point to the specific counterpart in another language, not the entire foreign language version. I couldn’t find another example, but we can use a previous one. Because there is a single hreflang attribute on the whole website, different pages actually point to the root of that language version, regardless of the page or language version you’re on.

  Specific page hreflang attribute points to root of language version

  If you implement a non-dynamic link tag in the header template of your website, all pages will have the same HREFlang. This is a bad idea!

  In some cases, such as this one, you’re better off not having the hreflang attribute at all rather than having it implemented incorrectly.

  The correct implementation in this case would be https://www.cricketwireless.com/support/apps-and-services.html with a rel=”alternate” attribute to https://espanol.cricketwireless.com/ayuda/27g/aplicaciones-y-servicios.html.

  Also, remember that it should have a self-referencing hreflang attribute to itself.

  Incorrect language / country codes: The language code is very often misspelled. Many times, webmasters and web developers use the country code instead of the language code. Here are some official Google insights:

  Official Google statement about country codes in the hreflang attribute

  So, normally, you have to put the language code, not the country code. The country code is optional and can be added to target specific languages in specific regions. For example, you could target the Spanish speaking audience in the US, or the English speaking audience in France. Is this useful?

  I don’t know… let’s say that some people from UK are visiting Italy, and they want to buy some souvenirs. They don’t know any Italian, so they type “buy souvenirs in Venice” in Google. There you go: you just have an English speaking target audience in an Italian region.

  The full list of language codes can be found here, and the full optional list of country codes can be found here.

  No x-default attribute for language pick page: Google recommends using one more tag, placed after all the other languages, to specify the language selection page, if there is one. For example, if the homepage just presents a list of languages to choose from, that would be the x-default version.

  In the following case, you can see that the homepage of nunnauuni.com is a language selection page. The page is well set up, redirecting users on their second visit accordingly. Although the site has all the other language attributes, including the self-referencing one, it’s missing the x-default tag which specifies the general language selection page.

  Missing x-default tag on nunnauuni.com

  The homepage is also missing all the other tags. Instead, it should include them and also have a self-referencing x-default tag. The correct code to be added after the language list in this case is <link rel=”alternate” href=”https://nunnauuni.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />.

  If you’re using 301’s to geo-redirect users by IP, you can specify the default version in the HTTP header.  To do this in WordPress, you will need to use an HTTP Headers Plugin. The code, however, is a little bit different: Link: http://www.example.es; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”es-ES”.

  Conflicts, Bad Implementation and Confusion Regarding the rel=”canonical” Tag

  People still don’t understand what the canonical tag does. They have a vague idea about it, but many times use it the wrong way. In a nutshell, here’s what the canonical tag actually does:

  The rel=”canonical” tag tells search engines what page to display in their results pages.

  To better understand the tag, think of it like this: if you have 10 pages about the same subject, they will start competing with each other in the search engines. This confuses Google, so you can use the canonical tag to help it figure things out, and point to the exact page you prefer being shown in the search engines.

  The canonical tag should always be a self-referencing one, meaning page A should point to itself, except when you want it to display something else instead of page A in the SERPS. Having a self-referencing canonical tag will help you remove any risk of duplicate content issues generated by dynamic parameters, such as ?replytocomm or eCommerce filters.

  The canonical tag works! I’ll share a story. Some time ago, I published a post on my personal blog, which was syndicated by another publisher. I didn’t manage to get it indexed on my blog and, because the other publisher was more popular, Google indexed their article first. So, in a couple of weeks, they happily ranked in the top 5 with my article. I contacted them, politely asked for them to add the canonical tag and in about a week, Google picked it up and started displaying my page instead.

  Don’t try to trick Google into displaying just a landing page or some strange page that doesn’t actually serve the user’s intent. It won’t work and you can risk getting penalized.

  Getting back to the multilingual websites, the canonical tag should be self-referencing the page it’s on, unless otherwise specifically desired . A common error is this:

  The wrong way to do it is: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical URL to it’s English counterpart, www.youtwebsite.com/fashion-show/.

  If you combine this with an HREFlang attribute, then you’re basically fooling Google around, telling it to go from EN to FR and then back from FR to EN again.

  A good implementation would be: www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ with a canonical tag pointing to either www.yourwebsite.fr/defile-mode/ (itself) or, if desired, www.yourwebsite.fr/some-other-french-page/.

  Never use the rel=”alternate” hreflang to solve duplicate content issues, as this is not its purpose. It will only tell Google to show that version of the page for a different location and language in a browser.

  Geographical and IP Based Redirect Issues

  I was discussing this recently with someone at a meeting. One of his clients insisted that the English homepage on his site was displaying in French by default, instead of English. The reason? His browser was in French, so the main English page was automatically redirected by a WordPress plugin.

  Now Matt Cutts said in his cloaking video that geo-redirect isn’t something to worry about. He also says that users coming from France or a French speaking location will be happy to get their content displayed directly in French.

    However, keep in mind that although you can send users from France to the French version, you can’t guarantee that everyone in France uses a French IP or has their browser in French. 

Many people use their browsers in English, for example. This means that they will constantly be redirected, no matter what they do. Also, with VPNs becoming more and more popular, IP isn’t a fool-proof metric either.

  Setting geo-redirection on its own doesn’t help you rank better in other languages. In my opinion, the best way to direct the user to the right version is using the HREFlang attribute to properly display the desired page in their search engine. Of course, if they use a different IP with VPNs, the search engine will still display the wrong version, thinking the user lives somewhere else, but any user using a VPN should be aware of that.

    If someone is going to access your website directly, it will either access it through the right country URL, or through the homepage. If you have a clearly visible language selector in place, I consider any user to be smart enough these days to be able to get to the right version.

  In case your website already provides automatic redirection and you choose to keep it, make sure you set the x-default hreflang attribute as well. This will tell Google where the language selection page is and it will display that whenever it is unsure of the user’s true location or language.

Make sure that the language selection flags are clearly visible, on desktop and on mobile.

  Using Robots.Txt or No-Index Tag on Translated Pages

  Another common issue when translating pages is to forget the no-index tag on, or leave it there on purpose. I can understand forgetting it, as you do not want Google to index your alternate language version of the website before it’s finished.

  But if you leave it on purpose, it doesn’t really make any sense. I’ve read some rumors about people being afraid of duplicate content penalties. Although there is no such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand the issue.

  You might be thinking “How could someone think French and English versions are duplicates?” At first, I thought so myself, but then I realized it must be about the same language displayed in different locations. For example, en-us and en-gb.

Although you could simply use the language selector to display the same version in both regions, it can be useful to have separate versions.

This way, you can have different sliders, products or offers in different regions. For example, if you sell T-shirts with messages, some texts might fit the US and only some might fit the UK.

  If you do have multiple English versions, using the no-index tag is a bad idea if you have all the HREFlang annotations set up properly. If you reference a version with HREFlang and then use no-index on it, you’re basically telling Google “Hey check this out over here!” and then “Ha ha, just joking, nothing to crawl here, go away!”

  Don’t joke with Google!

  Language Selector Flag URLs

  One common mistake that happens is having a static implementation of the language switch button or flag. Users expect to see what they searched for. If you’re in a subpage of the website, changing the language shouldn’t take the user to the homepage of that language. At least, not all the time. It should take them, preferably, to that specific page, in the desired language.

  The problem here is that it’s not always that easy to do. You can  have, for example, 10 pages in English, but only 8 are translated in French. What do you do with the other two? Well, you have three options:

  Option one is to send the user to the most relevant French page that you have regarding that subject 

Option two is to send them to the homepage

Option three is to specify to the user that there is no translated version for that specific page

  Option three is the worst from my point of view, because users will most likely leave the website on the spot when they receive the message. It basically says “This website doesn’t have what you’re looking for.”

  The homepage option isn’t such a big deal on a small website, where you only have About Us, Services and Contact Us. People will figure out easily on what page they were previously. It can still affect the user experience a little, but things will be fine.

  However, if you have a blog or a huge website with thousands of pages and articles, the users will have a very hard time finding what article they were on if you send them to the homepage.

  A good example of a language selection implementation that always sends you to the homepage can be viewed on clinlife.com.

    English URLs for Other Languages

  Since we’ve just spotted the untranslated URL in the example above, let’s talk about this. Why not translate all your foreign URLs? I mean, we all know that using some keywords in the URL can help you rank better. Obviously, ‘studies’ will be less helpful in Brasil than ‘estudos’. We know the content isn’t dynamic on a static URL because the URL parent changes (/brpt#/ to /caen#/).

If you’re going to translate your website, make sure you translate your URLs as well.

This is often overlooked and there are many examples that can be given. Here’s one:

  No url translation on antrhropologie.com

  And here’s another one:

  No URL translation on thenorthface.com

    Think of Other Search Engines, Too

  Google here and Google there, but the truth is that in other countries, Google isn’t the most popular search engine! Russia, for example, uses Yandex, and China has Baidu. Different countries also use different search engines in different proportions.

  Source: www.martinkovac.com

  Google is censored in some countries, so think twice before spending time to translate the content for those regions. Also, consider that other search engines don’t have the same exact algorithms as Google does. It’s good to know, for example, that Yandex doesn’t use links in it’s algorithm.

  Focusing All the Links Only on the Main Version

  This is one of the things that always keeps international competitors far behind the local ones. Google really appreciates local/regional links, so if you have a website translation in Spanish, you’re better off having links from .es domains than having links from .com domains.

  Local competitors know this and, even more, it’s far easier for them to acquire .es links than it is for an international competitor. They don’t only have to rely on building the links, because they can network and attend meetings, meet new people and promote their websites in other ways.

  It’s also very common for an international website not to focus on it’s translated versions. But since you’ve spent so much time translating it, shouldn’t you also focus on promoting it?

  If we take one of our previous examples and feed it to the Site Explorer, we can see the discrepancy:

  Screenshot from the cognitiveSEO’s Site Explorer, showing the discrepancy between links

  What’s even worse about that 0.7% is that all those .fr links are pointing to the English version of the website:

  Regional backlinks points to wrong version

  Call it local SEO if you want, but focus on building some regional backlinks and make sure you build them to the right version.

  Display & Content Multi Language Issues That Affect UX 

  Although user experience issues can still be attributed to lack of knowledge, content issues probably have more to do with unawareness. Anyway, here’s what you should be keeping an eye on:

  Using Automatic Website Translation Software

  Let’s start with something really common… We all know that Google Translate doesn’t always get it right. It actually… gets it wrong lots of the time (for now).

  Most people use this technique to get English content into other languages, because Google isn’t too good at detecting automatically translated content. Sure, Google might not be as good at understanding languages other than English, but users still are. And since UX is such an important metric, it’s a waste of money and time trying to do this at scale.

    Providing bad language translation to users will affect your brand and probably the chance to ever hit that target market in the future. If you want to build something solid, get a professional human translator.

  Not Doing Keyword Research

  Don’t just translate the keywords and expect to get results from it. A professional translator can’t do everything. It’s a good start, but you might also need to contact someone that knows both the native language and SEO to be able to properly identify and add the right phrases in your content.

  It would also be irrelevant to compare numbers, as English is far more used than Italian for example, so the English numbers will always be higher. However, I hope you get the idea that people search different things in different countries, but want the same product. Do the research!

  Not Having Any Cultural Awareness

  If you really want to have an impact, you have to study the culture a little bit. A translator might help, but you might need more than this. You’ll need a regional, someone who’s actually lived there and can provide some insights. Of course, this is at a higher level, but it’s worth doing it if you have the resources.

  A good easy example to start with are the date formats. Some countries use dd/mm/yy, while others use mm/dd/yy. Another good example would be showing an article about pork meat in a Muslim region. Not a very bright idea. Not only will it be completely irrelevant, but it will also make a lot of people feel bad.

  Not Fully Translating Captchas

  This is something common. Many people these days use the Google Recaptcha, but very few actually translate it. The result is something like this:

  All the content in French, but the captcha is in English

  Now for you this isn’t a problem, since you’re reading this article. But for someone else who doesn’t speak English, it could be. If they don’t know what to do, they won’t be able to contact you.

  The webmasters did take action against this by displaying the following message: Cochez la case “I’m not a robot” et suivez les instructions. Ce service nous protège des spammeurs.

  Problem solved, right? Not quite! Does this look familiar?

  Second occasional verification. This can also be different each time.

  Yeah… this can be a little frustrating.

  No captcha translation makes users unhappy

  But the fix for it is actually very easy. Recaptcha works using a JavaScript file. That JS file can be translated with a ULR parameter. If the plugin you’re using doesn’t allow this, you can search the code for the following script:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js

  Then, just add ?hl=xx after the URL, where xx is the language code, same as with the HREFlang annotations (fr,es,en). To translate it in French, for example, it should look like this:

  https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api.js?hl=fr

  Using HREFlang, But All Content Is in English

  On the other hand, there would be websites trying to rank English versions in other language regions. I’m not sure if anyone actually tried this, but there might be a possibility. If this went through your head, don’t try it! Don’t add the HREFlang to try and display your English version of the website in other regions. Google isn’t stupid.

  Not only will this not work, but it would be against Google’s guidelines and might actually hurt your rankings. The HREFlang attribute should only be used if you truly will display the website in the specified language and region.

  Fonts and Diacritics

  Fonts can always be a problem when translating a website. You have to make sure that your current font supports all the special characters in the language you’re translating the site to. Otherwise, they will display using a default font and will usually look horrible!

  “When the utilized font doesn’t contain a specific character, the software will use another font for it.”

  A good thing to look for is what happens on your mobile device. Sometimes, the characters display properly on your desktop but fail to display correctly on mobile devices. Also, your computer might display the font properly if it has it installed, but other computers might not. Using your mobile device to test this is a good idea.

  Usually it’s a font implementation issue, so make sure you check with your web designer before deciding to replace the font completely.

  Neglecting Social Media

  Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore social media. If you went through all the effort of translating the websites, you might as well put in some effort into promoting it. If you’ve already registered different social media accounts for other countries, put them to good use by posting relevant content there as well.

  Keep in mind that in some countries, different social media platforms are popular. For example, don’t spend time trying to promote your website on Twitter in East European countries for instance. (I can tell you for a fact that people don’t really use the platform). On the other side, in other countries, Facebook doesn’t even exist (China).

  Things also vary depending on the niche you’re in. Tech images and news don’t work well on Pinterest, but cooking recipes and healthy lifestyle/motivational messages do. Thing is, your target audience might be in different places.

  Having an active social media account is a sign of authority. It means the brand is real and, most importantly, alive. It will help you gain the traction you need in order to rank well in Google with the translated version.

  Conclusion

  A multilingual website is definitely something not easy to get set up right but, hopefully, this article helped you understand how to avoid the most common HREFlang mistakes if you’re planning to translate your website. Also, since you’re here, make sure you check out our article about using subdomains vs using subfolders when building multiple website sections.

  If you’re on a custom platform or you’re using a custom website builder and want to make sure your implementation is correct, you can try Aleyda Solis’ Tool. Use it to generate the correct HREFlang tags and then add them or compare them to your current ones. Remember, they need to be in your <head> section.

  Thanks so much for reading this till the end! If you have any comments, ideas or opinions, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.

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