Find out what domain addresses Blogger generates, what canonical addresses are, how regional domains work, whether hreflang is needed for translations, and how to avoid duplicate content issues. Tips for branding your blog in different regions on a free domain! 🌐✨
What is a canonical address?
🔹 The Canonical URL is the main URL of a page that tells search engines which version to consider the original. 🔹 On Blogger, canonical addresses are automatically generated. For example: https://khak-tekhnolog.blogspot.com/.
💡 Why is this important? The canonical address helps search engines avoid confusion if the same page is available at different URLs.
What regional domain extensions does Blogger create?
🔹 The Canonical URL is the main URL of a page that tells search engines which version to consider the original. 🔹 Blogger previously automatically generated regional domains such as.blogspot.fr,.blogspot.de,.blogspot.co.uk. However, Blogger now redirects all requests from regional domains to the primary blogspot.com domain. For example:
If a user in France enters blogname.blogspot.fr, they are redirected to blogname.blogspot.com.
💡 What does it mean: Regional domains are actually duplicates of the main page, but thanks to redirects, search engines only consider the canonical version
How does redirection affect language versioning?
🔹 Redirecting makes SEO easier because all regional versions are reduced to a single canonical address. 🔹 However, complications can arise if:
You have multiple static language versions (e.g., English, French, Spanish) and you want each to be clearly associated with a specific geographic area.
Redirection removes the ability to directly use regional domains for a multilingual strategy if you want to tailor content for different countries.
💡 Bottom Line Upfront: For single-language blogs, redirecting is an advantage. But for blogs with multiple language versions, you will need to manually configure the link via hreflang.
What if the blog is in one language, but a translator is used?
🔹 If your blog has content in only one language but uses a built-in translator (such as Google Translate), search engines only index the original (original) content.
🔸 How search engines see it:
Translations created dynamically are not indexed.
Indexing occurs only for pages with a canonical URL, for example: https://khak-tekhnolog.blogspot.com/.
💡 Conclusion: If translations are created automatically through the translator, you don't need to add hreflang tags.
Do I need to write hreflang tags if the blog is multilingual?
🔹 If you manually create separate versions of the blog (for example, with translations of content on different pages), then hreflang tags are still needed so that search engines correctly determine the language of each version.
🔸 For Blogger, hreflang tags can be added to the section via the HTML editor:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://khak-tekhnolog.blogspot.com/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://khak-tekhnolog.blogspot.com/fr/" /> <link rel="canonical" href="https://khak-tekhnolog.blogspot.com/" />
💡 Note: Hreflang tags are especially useful for indicating the relationship between language versions if each has unique content. For dynamic translations (e.g. through the built-in translator), this is not required.
What happens if you do nothing?
🔸 If you use a single language, redirecting resolves most regional domain issues. Search engines will only see the canonical address of blogspot.com.
🔸 If you have multiple language versions and you don't specify their relationship using hreflang:
Search engines may not interpret the structure of the blog correctly.
Translated versions will not be ranked for the corresponding regions.
How to brand a blog in different regions on a free domain?
🔹 Even with regional domain redirection, you can make your blog recognizable in different countries:
Use a generic name: A blog name that is easy to remember regardless of language (e.g., khak-tekhnolog).
Add a translator: Translator will help users in other countries read content in their language.
Optimize content:
Tailor topics and keywords for audiences in different regions.
Use metadata to specify the language of the content (for example, <meta name="language" content="fr">).
💡 Bottom Line:
Regional Domain Redirection makes managing a blog in one language easier. If the blog is multilingual, hreflang tags will help improve SEO and visibility in different regions. Blogger is still a powerful platform for blogging on a free domain. 🚀