Overview
The Default Language Widget is designed to automate the process of generating <link rel="alternate" hreflang="" /> tags for multi national sites seeking to optimize and simplify SEO.
To ensure that search engines index your international sites correctly, add this Widget to all Templates on all sites in CM1 that are international language versions of your site as well as the default language version. Then edit the widget to select your language settings for each site and save the widget as a Shared Asset for use on all templates for all language versions of your site.
The widget will first generate the default lnaguage <link rel="alternate" hreflang="" /> tags for your default site, then it will scan the folder structure of each of site selected in the configuration settings and if a foreign language version is detected then a <link rel="alternate" hreflang="" /> tag will be generated and added to the pages metadata.
NOTE: In order for the widget to detect foreign language versions of a given page, the folder structure of the default and foreign language site must be the same including the page and directory names. In cases where a directory or page name will be translated into another language, you will need to supplement use of this widget by adding and configuring the Local Language widget as well to manually tag pages as alternate language versions of a given page. See Local Language Widget for details.
Help
For help on how to use this widget, click on the help tip button and an info box will expand with information on how to configure this widget. It will also contain links to Google Webmaster resources for more information on using Preferred Domain Names and configuring <link rel="alternate" hreflang="" /> tags.
Tips:
- International sites should follow identical site folder layouts or this widget can't generate the alternate url. See Local Language Widget for additional configuration.
- Always choose language and country when you want search engines to return search results only in that region.
- Save this Widget as a Shared Asset and re-use that asset on all templates on all language version sites.
- There should only be one Default site.
- Site Names should match the Preferred Domain Name for the site.
- Click here for more information: rel=alternate href-lang=x
Configuration
Configuring the Default Language Widget is relatively simple. Settings marked with an asterisk are required fields.
First click the button to add a new site record
then edit the following fields:
Protocol
Select which protocol to use for page links for this language site: 'http' or 'https' for SSL enabled sites.
Site
Select your Percussion site from list of available sites.
Language
Select the language for the site.
Region/Country
Optionally select a Region or Country for the alternate language metadata link. When the Region or Country is selected, Search Engines will only return results from the international site to users speaking that language in that region. Otherwise UK English content might be returned before US English content on US Search Engines and visa versa.
Default
Select which site in the list is meant to be the Default language site for Search Engine scanning.
Saving and Applying to Templates
Once the site configuration is complete the widget should be saved as a Shared Asset and applied to all Templates.
An example of a fully configured Default Language widget looks like the following:
The widget can then be saved as a Shared Asset using the checkbox in the lower left corner of the widget configuration window and stored in your Asset directory.
Finally, add the Default Language widget to all templates on all sites that control pages with multiple language versions.
After all templates have an empty Default Language widget, switch to the Content tab of the template and drag the Shared Asset from your Assets directory onto the empty Default Language widget on each template.
For each page you preview in Edit of Preview mode, the Default Language widget will show a message displaying the configured sites for the page you are viewing:
If a configured site is not displayed in the widget, then the alternate language versions of this page were not found. This is because the folder path or page name is a different name than the default site, usually due to name translation.
Pages with translated path/page names can be added with the Local Language widget.