Multi language website issue

Hello guys, have a question. There is a website with two languages: site.com/, site.com/ru, i.e.

The code is for the site.com/, and the for the site.com/ru

What does it mean for the site? Do the RU version will not rank because it seems duplicate for the crawlers, or smth like this? Should I use an alternate tag instead of canonical?

Here this is just a guess, as I did not test that, but it just seems common sense.

These are 2 different languages, data-lang="ru" and data-lang="en", so google knows a page can be translated and the concept of canonical should not apply; as one page will rank for Russian queries and Russian searchers, the other for English. I don't see the canonical in English taking over the Russian page for Russian terms.

In other words, translated pages are not duplicate as they do not compete with the original.

safeSEOboost said:

Here this is just a guess, as I did not test that, but it just seems common sense.

Click to expand...

Forgot to mention, both pages have "canonical" metatag:
for the site.com/, and the
for the site.com/ru

Should I in logic replace "canonical" with "alternate", or smth like that? It's my first case with a dual lingual project and I really do not know. The problem is, that I'm ranking in RU only with 16 KW. But in EN in 367. Smth goes wrong I guess

Iezuit said:

Should I in logic replace "canonical" with "alternate", or smth like that?

Click to expand...

Using canonical on both should be fine, as these are different pages, not duplicate; translating a page creates a totally new page, there is nothing to worry about duplication or canonical, just treat them as different pages ranking in different countries.

Iezuit said:

problem is, that I'm ranking in RU only with 16 KW. But in EN in 367.

Click to expand...

You can nearly treat the RU and EN sites as 2 different sites; if one ranks for many more keywords compared to the other, it could be for a number of reasons, including your internal and internal backlinks; I would not be surprised if most of your links go to / and much less to /ru.