SEO question: Need help on rel="alternate" hreflang="x"

[TruvoDirectories]

Hi all,

we have webcontent in 3 languages (official belgian yellow pages), we use a separate domain per language, these are also our brands.
ex. for the restaurant Wagamamahttp://www.goudengids.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to nl-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to fr-be
http://www.pagesdor.be/wagamama-antwerpen-2018/ corresponds to en-be

The trouble is that sometimes I see the incorrect urls appearing when doing a search in google, ex. when searching on google.be (dutch=nederlands=nl-be) I see the www.pagesdor.be version appearing (french)

I was trying to find a fix for this within https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=nl , but this only seems to apply to websites which use SUBdomains for language purposes. I'm not sure if can work for DOMAINS.

Can anyone help me out?

Kind regards

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

Hreflang will work on ccTLDs (.com, .co.uk, .de) etc so is not restricted to only sub domains. Yours is an interesting case where you have multiple domains for languages but all within the same TLD. I would think that hreflang would work in this case also although could not find much in the way of specific case studies or recommendations. I would be inclined to try it on a subset of pages and see what happens. On those three links you gave the content looks a bit thin and some is common across all the domains (the reviews for example which are in any of the three languages which could be confusing to google). Implementing hreflang should help clarify each domains intended target audience and could also help in better indexing of all the sites (which maybe you are also having some issues with?) check here for an interesting read http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/case-study-the-impact-of-hreflang-tag.

[TruvoDirectories]

tx Lynn, I'll do a test and will let you the outcome.