Will hreflang indication help single language site?
-
I have read a few articles that say indicating a language per webpage with hreflang really only helps sites that use multiple languages.
Although my site is only in English, I see that it is ranking for a few foreign language keywords in Google Search Console (not sure exact traffic but roughly 15% of visitors from Search are non English preferred).
My thought is that indicating language will help my single-language site because it will weed out the non-english speakers who are probably bouncing from the site. Overall I am thinking it might improve the quality of my search traffic.
Do you think my logic is sound, or is adding hreflang not beneficial to my site?
All feedback welcomed. Thanks!
-
Are there any major cons to include the hreflang attribute if there isn't a translated version? My site has some pages that are translated, which we include proper hreflang tags, but some pages that do not currently have a translated page. It sounds like it would take more work to remove the tags on those pages without a translated version than to keep it. Will this cause major issues with Google?
-
Thanks for the response, Gianluca. When you point out that rel=alternate is used, that does make it clearer that this is a tag used for a pair of URLs. That makes sense that this feature probably wasn't built to use for my scenario.
So I am guessing, in my situation I can't really inform Google to only target people who speak a certain language. I kind of just have to leave it up to Google to decipher. Even if I set the target country in Search Console to the US, this would exclude other English-speaking countries who are still in my target audience, which includes global English speakers (i.e. Singapore).
Is there anything we haven't brought up that you would recommend for my situation?
-
Ups, then im sorry.
I've never intended to give false information. I had incorrect information.Thanks for correcting me.
GR -
Here the answers:
-
the hreflang tag doesn't slow down websites performance. it makes have an incidence only in the case you have hundreds of hreflang markups in the html code, so that in t case it is better to use the sitemap.xml implementation.
-
you site is only in English, hence you can't use the hreflang, because it is an "alternate", therefore it always needs a pair (eg: "e-US". using it only in self-referential way (as sometimes we do with rel "canonical" is wrong and Google will present it as a mistake and not consider it
-
if you really want to target only the US public, then you must geotarget the domain in Search Console, going to its "International" section and selecting United States as the country targeted by the site.
-
-
You are is wrong and misleadin, sorry.
The he is never redundant and an English site could also be targeting another country than the USA.
You're correct saying it's not useful in this case, but not for the reason you give
-
Thanks for the response Gaston!
I am aware this will not help my page rankings. My thought is that it will improve the quality of my site's search traffic as explained in my original post.
Hmm.. do you really think adding "" to my html will slow down load speed? If that is the case, you are saying adding one link to your page will slow down the load time. I just don't think adding this small piece of code will have a significant effect on page speed.
If I check the International Targeting tab in Search Console, it says no hreflang tags being used, so I'm not sure how redundant this would be. I know Google can pick up languages, but I think of adding hreflang tags as insurance that the right audience will be reached.
I like your example about my mom (haha) and I would like to expand on it. If you were looking for "a woman" and came across my mother, you would be able to read the sign and be satisfied your search came to an end. However, if a non-english speaker was searching for "a woman" and came across my mother, although she has the features of a woman, s/he may be confused by the sign with foreign characters and leave immediately (this is bounce rate IRL).
God (AKA Google) would then take note that 50% of the people searching for a woman, that visited my mother, left confused. So s/he would stop leading people in search of "a woman" to my mother.
Does this depiction change your opinion on my thoughts at all?
-
Hi Jonathan,
Technically speaking, adding the hreflang sentence will not help your SERPs. Because it's redundant.
Also, I'd advise you to not add it. The reason is simple, the more lines of code, the slower the page is. And there is a common sense that google does not like redundant code.
Think it by yourself, in which way will it help you, that knowing that an english site, having a signal expressing that their language is english? Its like your mom would have a sign with ''I am a woman''
Hope it helps.
GR
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
Help: Trouble converting customers with new adwords campaign for a new site
I have just launched my brand new e-commerce site www.zenory.co.nz We are wanting to expand global as you can see we have com.au and also .com but due to our min budget we had to start with NZ first for organic search and a min monthly budget on adwords which doesn't come close to what our competitors are paying. Really is it worth paying out our limited budget with adwords? Or should be put that into ranking organic search. While we have only just started our adwords PPC campaign and I think it has only been roughly two weeks - We have had around 18 people sign up, to which we have a 3 step process, however, we are struggling to convert and complete a transaction which customer places credit card details in step 3. Does anyone have any ideas around how we could better optimize or perhaps make any suggestions? Our competitors spend rather large amounts of up to 3000k - 300k per month on adwords, and there is just no competing with that. Any suggestions I would definitely be open to... Thanks alot
Conversion Rate Optimization | | edward-may0 -
Is there anything obvious about my site to why it's not converting?
Hi I am reaching out to the community to see if anyone can see why our site is not converting or point out anything that might be hindering conversion. Our site is www.tidy-books.com Any help would really be appreciated. I can provide more details on request Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | tidybooks0 -
Should I add social media icons to homepage of ecommerce site?
... In particular Facebook likes for social proof and credibility? (We have 1.7k likes, more than most competitors). Aimed at the higher end of the market, I've tried to keep the aesthetic a bit more pared down. But, perhaps this needs to be made more prominent?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Coraltoes770 -
Site Redesign - 2 Target Audiences?
Hey everyone, we are planning a redesign on our website (we have been planning it since Fall last year, but got very busy in the Winter), and some new content / design questions have arisen. Right now, we are a "digital media" agency, and we offer video, design, and marketing services. So we do web videos, motion graphics, websites, seo, really a little bit of everything except for 3d modeling. What we are really trying to sell is the combination of these services (we may create a web video and redesign a groups website, then manage their adwords and marketing campaigns) and become our audiences "Go To" digital media agency. We were toying with the idea of giving visitors the option of picking from one target audience or another when they arrived at the home page, and their experience would be customized to best fit the needs of that particular audience from there on out. For example, on our homepage we were thinking of display our overview and value proposition (which would be the same, no matter which target audience group you were a member of), then asking if the visitor was a "Small Business Owner looking for guidance" or a "Marketing Director looking for outsourcing partners", then based on what option they chose, they'd be directed to a corresponding landing page optimized for converting this audience. We were worrying this may drop our domain or page authority for our home page, since these aren't really keywords that we'd normally be trying to rank for. We understand that it is ideal to have 1 "niche" target audience, but we found that we heavily service both audiences. Any help or suggestions are appreciated, thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | RenderPerfect0 -
Need help Tracking PPC vs Organic and respective ROI
So I have a client who uses PPC and Organic SEO to drive traffic. Once a user gets to the site, the most common action is to fill out a form. I have Auto Tagging enabled in Adwords so all PPC clicks have "gclid" in the url. I am also grabbing the Google Cookie and parsing it out to determine if the visitor is PPC or Organic. So I have an if statement in my form code to pass PPC vs organic through the form for tracking purposes: $url = 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; if (false !== strpos($url,'gclid')) { ?> Essentially this is saying: If gclid is in the url, or if the cookie contains PPC
Conversion Rate Optimization | | tjsherrill
set the Web field as PPC Else
Set it as Organic. this is working about 80% of the time. I am trying to raise the accuracy. any ideas where I might be missing some data? thanks0 -
How can I Monetize My Site with The Type of Traffic it Receives?
I was just in here yesterday asking a question, so I appreciate everyone's patience with this newbie! This is a totally different site that I have a question about so here goes: I have a site that has started to receive large amounts of traffic from an image search. My intention was to use Amazon for products based on my website theme. I haven't been getting traffic from my intended keywords. Now I rank #2 for an image search, loads of traffic! GREAT! But what next? These ppl. aren't looking to buy stuff, they just want the image. Fine, it is a public domain image. I thought of adding some more informational articles and using adsense to bring in some cash. Any opinions on the best way to go with this site? I only have 3 articles up so it could go in any direction from here. Thanks!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | iheartkelby0 -
Improving Bounce rate, Time on Site & Pageviews per visit
Based on what seems like a general agreement that the Panda update has modified Google's algorithm and on page metrics such as Bounce rate, Time on Site & Page views per visit are now vital to a websites rankings. What methods are you using to improve these metrics? Have they worked?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | donthe0