Are my hreflang tags set up correctly? Duplicate content issues

Technical Q&A
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1

Hello,

I have a question regarding hreflang tags, as I’m curious as to whether or not they are being implemented correctly on our website (via Shopify Markets).

Just to give some background context, we target two markets (the US & Canada) using Shopify markets. We target the US market using our standard domain, and we target Canada using our standard domain + a subfolder. For example, this is how our domains look for each market (I’m using a placeholder domain as an example):

Homepage:

Product Pages:

It’s my understanding that when using a subfolder to target different markets, Shopify automatically generates hreflang tags.

However, I’m trying to determine whether the hreflang tags that Shopify has generated on our website are set up correctly, as I’m noticing that Google Search Console is flagging our URL’s containing ‘/en-ca’ (for Canadian market) as duplicates - and choosing the standard US URL as the Google-Selected Canonical. I think this is normal, but I just want to make sure that Google isn’t penalizing our website in the search rankings for duplicate content.

Additionally, in Bing Webmaster Tools, I have about 764 pages being flagged for ‘Too many pages with identical meta descriptions’, and 701 pages being flagged for ‘Too many pages with identical titles’.

Here is what my hreflang tags look like on my Shopify product pages:

hreflang tags
hreflang tags570×163 7.34 KB

^ Could someone advise on whether or not these hreflang tags are set up correctly, or if there needs to be an adjustment made - to prevent GSC and Bing from flagging duplicate content?

It’s also worth noting that the only difference between the pages of the two different markets is currency (US market gets displayed USD currency, and Canada gets displayed CAD currency). Other than that, everything else (language, content etc) is the same between the two markets.

I’m hoping to get this resolved, as I believe it is negatively affecting my SEO rank.

Regards,
Matt

2

Hey Matt @GlasgowMerchant,

Your hreflang setup looks correct for designating regional versions of the same content. Shopify Markets handles this well by default.

The issue you’re seeing in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools isn’t a problem with the hreflang tags themselves, but rather with the content being too similar across the US and Canadian versions. Even with hreflang, if the language and core content (titles, meta descriptions, product descriptions, etc.) are virtually identical, search engines will often consolidate signals and select a canonical URL. Google picking your US URL as the canonical for the Canadian version, and Bing flagging identical meta descriptions and titles, both point to this.

To resolve this, you need to introduce more unique content for each market beyond just the currency display. At a minimum, ensure your Canadian pages have distinct title tags and meta description tags. Ideally, you’d also want to localize some of the body copy, product descriptions, or add region-specific details like promotions, shipping information, or even customer reviews. Even subtle differences in spelling (e.g., “color” vs. “colour”) or phrasing can help signal distinct content to search engines, encouraging them to treat the pages as truly separate entities for indexing and ranking purposes, rather than just regional alternates of the same page. While Google selecting a canonical isn’t typically a penalty, it can impact how effectively your /en-ca pages rank independently for Canadian users.

Hope that helps!
Youssef

3

Hey Youssef,

Thanks for your response!

Initially, I was thinking I needed to update the hreflang tag for the US market to ‘en-US’. But it doesn’t seem that this is the issue?

Thanks for the insights regarding implementing unique title tags, meta descriptions, spelling etc to different regions/markets. This is something I need to dive into a bit more.

Do you know if Google and Bing have become more strict with this type of thing in recent months? I’ve been using Shopify markets (and a Subfolders) for a few years now, and I don’t recall encountering these types of technical issues in the past.

Matt

4

Hey @GlasgowMerchant,

As far as I could tell, it’s always been that way at least on Google search!