Tough SEO problem, Google not caching page correctly

[ss2016]

My web site is

http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/

Cached version of French version is,

cache:www.mercimamanboutique.com/fr-fr/

showing incorrectly

The German version:

cache:www.mercimamanboutique.com/de-de/

is showing correctly.

I have resubmitted site links, and asked Google re-index the web site many times. The German version always gets cached properly, but the French version never does. This is frustrating me, any idea why? Thanks.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Could you describe what the differences are that you see? When I try to see the cached pages for both of them I don't see any big differences in there that would indicate an issue.

[DirkC]

You have an issue with your hreflang tags, which seems to confuse Google.  You can use these tools to check your implementation: https://flang.dejanseo.com.au/ or https://technicalseo.com/seo-tools/hreflang/ - both indicate issues with your implementation. Main issue is the fact that the self referencing hreflang tag is missing (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en). You could also add a x-default url - for the languages/countries that are not specified - pointing to one of the versions.

Personally I would remove the strict limitations on the de / fr version - why would you send austrian visitors to the .com version and not to the /de-de version -> I would rather use hreflang="de" in this case - idem for fr (unless you don't ship to these countries)

On each of your pages you should have all the tags. Example for your home:

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[ss2016]

This post is deleted!

[DirkC]

Sorry for late reply - you also have to add the self referencing version; check the example on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en (so each of the versions of the page will have the same block of hreflang urls)

Apart from that  - reciprocal means if page A as hreflang to page B - B should have a hreflang to A. I don't really see why the tool indicates this error as the pages are cross referencing each other - could be caused by the missing self referencing version.

There is a nice tool to generate the hreflang's - http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/ - you could try it & compare the generated version with what you actually have on your page.

Dirk

[ss2016]

Thank you Dirk, by fixing the hreflang tags, would this fix the problem with the Sitelinks appearing in the correct language? Currently for the German version of the web site, we are seeing English and German sitelinks and are now unable to demote the English sitelinks from Google removing the feature from Google web master tools. See the below screen shot.

http://i.imgur.com/OBz4qqW.jpg

Thank you again!

[DirkC]

If you check the Q&A you're not the only on to encounter this problem. In some of these cases it was caused by IP detection systems which automatically selected the country website based on IP (which caused problems because main Googlebot is using a US ip address) - I assume this is not the case with your site?

It's quite possible that it will solve the issue. Easiest way to check is making the modifications and check after a few days if the problem is solved. If not there is probably another issue.

Dirk

[ss2016]

Hi Dirk,

By IP are you referring to our server IP address?

It is a strange issue since the French version has all of the correct language sitelinks, only the German version displays mixed language. I will make the modifications that you have suggested earlier and check again after a few days, hopefully this fixes the problem.

[ss2016]

This post is deleted!

[DirkC]

It seems you have a system which redirects users to the default page.

When I try the site http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/ - It has a canonical http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/fr-fr/ - when I switch to German and go back to the same url it has a canonical http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/de-de/

The site seems to exist in https & http - may be better to redirect everything to https (although this is probably not related to the issue you encounter)

Dirk

Update:  I also noticed that the main rel alternate doesn't exist - http://www.mercimamanboutique.com/ is redirected to http://www.mercimamanboutique.com - I guess it's better not to use url's that are redirected but to use the final destination url