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There is one Website for the main company translated in two languages:

  • main-company.com/en/
  • main-company.com/de/

The company also has a subsidiary, linked under:

  • main-company.com/en/subsidiary.html
  • main-company.com/de/subsidiary.html

Now you can access the subsidiary with its on domainname pointing to the same root and redirected with .htacess to "subsidiary.html" in both languages:

  • subsidiary.com/en/subsidiary.html
  • subsidiary.com/de/subsidiary.html

Accessing the site with the domain subsidiary.com makes you browse the entire site under the domainname "subsidiary.com".

The question is: How do I set the proper hreflang tags for google?

Do I have to set the hreflang tag for both domainnames like this in each page?

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://main-company.com/de/subsidiary.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://main-company.com/en/subsidiary.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://subsidiary.com/de/subsidiary.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://subsidiary.com/en/subsidiary.html" />

or is it a problem to set the hreflang tags twice for de and en with different domainnames?

Thanks :-)

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  • edit I found some postings in the net that google doesn't like relative links, so I think <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="/de/subsidiary.html" /> isn't an option.
    – JohnDoe12345
    Jul 1, 2016 at 10:26
  • Then you need to ignore those postings and never visit that site for advice again. Also, hreflang is an attribute, not a "tag". And the <link> element has no closing slash.
    – Rob
    Jul 1, 2016 at 11:21

1 Answer 1

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In each page you should put the alternative languages for that page, and include that page too.

As Google says: "If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page must identify all language versions, including itself."

For example in http://main-company.com/de/subsidiary.html:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://main-company.com/de/subsidiary.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://main-company.com/en/subsidiary.html" />

And in http://subsidiary.com/de/subsidiary.html:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://subsidiary.com/de/subsidiary.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://subsidiary.com/en/subsidiary.html" />
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  • Thanks I know, but the page "/de/subsidiary.html" is only one page, accessible with 2 domain names (main-company.com / subsidiary.com). The Question is should I put all 4 alternate-links in only one page? Or should I use a relative link without the domain name?
    – JohnDoe12345
    Jul 4, 2016 at 5:55
  • So thrn you browse the same subdsidiary pages with different domains or you aleays ends in the subsidiary.com domain?
    – marcanuy
    Jul 4, 2016 at 11:40
  • You can browse the entire site under both domains. If you go to the second domain "subsidiary.com" you will be directed to "subsidiary.html" and then you can browse the entire site under "subsidiary.com". If you go to "main-company.com" you will browse the entire site under this domain starting from "index.html"
    – JohnDoe12345
    Jul 4, 2016 at 12:05
  • In that case you will have a big problem of Duplicate Content
    – marcanuy
    Jul 4, 2016 at 14:33

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