Story Based Question
You’re managing a website that serves multiple countries with content in different languages, including Spanish for Spain, French for France, and Japanese for Japan. Recently, you’ve noticed that some of your pages aren’t ranking as well as expected in these markets, and you’re wondering if the search engines are able to crawl and index all your multilingual content properly. You wonder, How do I monitor and resolve crawl issues for multilingual content?
Exact Answer
To monitor and resolve crawl issues for multilingual content, use Google Search Console to check crawl errors, ensure proper hreflang implementation, optimize site structure for each language, implement language-specific sitemaps, and test for accessibility and content duplication issues.
Explanation
Crawl issues for multilingual content can hurt your site’s visibility in international markets. Search engines like Google need to understand which content is relevant to which audience, and any issues can prevent them from crawling or indexing pages correctly. Here’s how to monitor and fix those issues:
- Use Google Search Console to Check Crawl Errors
- Google Search Console (GSC) is your primary tool for identifying crawl errors and issues with multilingual pages. You can check for issues like 404 errors, server errors, or blocked resources that may be preventing your multilingual content from being indexed properly.
- How to Implement: Log into Google Search Console and review the “Coverage” report for your website. If you see errors related to specific language pages (e.g., “404 not found” for the Spanish version of a page), take action to fix them. These errors can cause search engines to skip those pages entirely.
- Ensure Proper Hreflang Implementation
- Hreflang tags are crucial for telling search engines which version of a page to show to users based on language and region. Incorrect hreflang implementation can cause duplicate content issues or misdirect traffic to the wrong language version.
- How to Implement: Check that your hreflang tags are correctly placed in the HTML of each page. Ensure that each page in your multilingual site points to the correct language version with proper hreflang attributes. For example, the Spanish version should have a
hreflang="es"
tag, while the French version would havehreflang="fr"
. Tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb can help audit your hreflang implementation.
- Optimize Site Structure for Each Language
- Your site structure must clearly differentiate between language versions. This ensures that crawlers can easily find and index the content without confusion. Common strategies include using subdirectories (e.g.,
example.com/es/
for Spanish) or subdomains (e.g.,es.example.com
). - How to Implement: Review your site’s structure to make sure that each language is properly separated. If you’re using subdirectories, ensure that the folder names are logical and easy to understand. For example, avoid using generic names like
/language1/
and instead use/es/
for Spanish. This will help both users and search engines understand the language hierarchy.
- Your site structure must clearly differentiate between language versions. This ensures that crawlers can easily find and index the content without confusion. Common strategies include using subdirectories (e.g.,
- Implement Language-Specific Sitemaps
- A sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your site and easily crawl all its pages. For multilingual sites, you should create separate sitemaps for each language version to ensure that search engines can access all content without confusion.
- How to Implement: Create individual XML sitemaps for each language section of your site (e.g.,
sitemap-es.xml
for Spanish content,sitemap-fr.xml
for French content). Submit these sitemaps to Google Search Console under the “Sitemaps” section, and make sure they include links to all relevant pages in that language.
- Test for Accessibility and Content Duplication Issues
- Crawlers need access to your multilingual pages without encountering issues like blocked resources (e.g., images or CSS files) or duplicated content. If the same content appears in multiple languages without proper language tags, search engines might treat it as duplicate content.
- How to Implement: Use tools like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog to check if any important resources (e.g., images, JavaScript files, CSS) are blocked via the robots.txt file. Also, ensure that content isn’t duplicated across languages without clear differentiation. If necessary, use canonical tags to tell search engines which version is the preferred one.
Example
Imagine you’re managing an e-commerce site that sells electronic gadgets in different countries, with content available in English for the U.S., German for Germany, and Italian for Italy. You notice that the German version of your product pages isn’t showing up in search results like it should.
- Use Google Search Console:
You check Google Search Console and find that some of your German pages have a “404 not found” error. It turns out that a few internal links to those pages were broken. You fix these links, ensuring that Google can crawl them again. - Ensure Proper Hreflang Implementation:
After reviewing the hreflang tags on your pages, you realize that the German pages are not properly linked to the English version. You update the hreflang tags so that Google knows which page to show based on the user’s language and region. Now, the German version has ahreflang="de"
tag, and the English version hashreflang="en"
, pointing to the correct versions. - Optimize Site Structure for Each Language:
Your site uses subdirectories for language versions (example.com/de/
for German andexample.com/it/
for Italian). You double-check the structure to make sure there’s no confusion between pages, and everything is neatly organized by language, helping both users and crawlers navigate the site easily. - Implement Language-Specific Sitemaps:
You’ve set up a separate sitemap for each language section—sitemap-de.xml
for German content andsitemap-it.xml
for Italian content. These are submitted to Google Search Console, ensuring that all pages in both languages are crawled and indexed. - Test for Accessibility and Content Duplication Issues:
Using Screaming Frog, you discover that some images were being blocked by the robots.txt file, which prevented crawlers from fully accessing your German content. You update the file to allow crawlers to view the images. Additionally, you review the content and ensure that the German and Italian product descriptions are unique, avoiding any content duplication issues.
Monitoring and resolving crawl issues for multilingual content is crucial for ensuring that search engines can properly index and rank your pages in different regions. By using tools like Google Search Console, implementing proper hreflang tags, optimizing your site structure, and addressing accessibility and duplication issues, you can improve your multilingual SEO and ensure a smooth crawling and indexing process.