Hreflang vs canonical

[Teklan]

I'm having an international Drupal website and the hreflang module is in use. However, I'm still not sure how to optimize the pages. Perhaps it's easier to ask with an example

**International: **www.example.com/products/product1
Here we have the master content of the product

**US: **www.example.com/us/products/product1
Here we have exactly the same content as international. Nothing is localized.

**UK: **www.example.com/uk/products/product1
Here we have almost the same content as on International. Here and there some local terms and extra text.

**German: **www.example.com/de/products/product1
Here we have a translated version of the international page.

Questions

1. Do I add hreflang from all to all pages + to itself?
2. Where do I add canonicals?
3. How should I optimize the content on the US and UK pages?

[ThomasHarvey]

This is a useful post for you: https://hreflang.org/use-hreflang-canonical-together/

[katemorris]

Quick question: Is there another reason you have the same content at /us/ as the "international" version? I assume the /us/ subdirectory is geo-targeted to the US in WMT?

1. hreflang should be present for the current pages and all other translated versions.

2. See the note about canonicals and hreflang in the other reply. Canonicals are for use in each specific page instance when you need them.

3. For the US vs UK, you need to research your market. I can't give you the answer to this without tons of research. I recommend researching each country market individually. There are different target keywords, competitors, and backlink profiles to research.

[Teklan]

Answer to the quick question: The reason of having the same content (e.g. solution/product/reference) page, is that the international content can be used for a local (e.g. /us) page as well. Sometimes, it's really needed to localize the content, sometimes the same content as the international one can be used.

1. Good, that's how it's done now.

2. Yes, very good explanation for this question. Thanks Thomas!

3. True. Perhaps we should not look this from an seo point of view but from a market perspective. I got some ideas, thanks