Setting up hreflang tags
-
Hi everyone,
A quick question about setting up your Hreflang tags. Here you can see 2 examples:
As you can see, the order of the elements is different. Be aware, there is a tiny difference between the 2: the first Hreflang is written for a specific language in a specific country, the second one only contains a language code.
Is this the reason why the order is different or is this just a coincidence and doesn't the order of the elements matter at all?
Thanks,
Jens -
Always is pleasure to help : )
-
Ok good to know!
Thanks for your answer Roman!
-
The order of the of the tag is not relevant as long you follow the rules for region, language, or country The link will need to have the "rel", "href" "hreflang" tags. So if you put the href before or after "hreflang" is not relevant.
-
Hi Roman,
Thanks for your answer!
About the order of the hreflangs, I actually ment inside the Hreflang itself.
Is there a difference if the order of the elements is switched:
or
<link=rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://example.com"></link=rel="alternate">The content is the same, but the positions "href"="http://example.com" and "hreflang"="en-us" are switched.
Do you know if it matters? Which one is correctly written then?
Thanks in advance,
Jens -
hreflang tags are a method to mark up pages that are similar in meaning but aimed at different languages and/or regions. You can use this for three types of variations:
- Content with regional variations like en-us and en-gb.
- Content in different languages like en, de and fr.
- A combination of different languages and regional variations.
You can use hreflang tags to target different markets that use the same language. This is a fairly common use case. Using hreflang tags you can differentiate between the US and the UK, or between Germany and Austria.
hreflang is code, which you can show to search engines in three different ways, more on that below. With this code you specify all the different URLs on your site(s) that have the same content. These URLs can have the same content in a different language, or the same language but targeted at a different region.
In a complete hreflang implementation, every URL specifies which other variations are available. When a user searches, Google goes through the following process:
- it determines that it wants to rank a URL;
- it checks whether that URL has hreflang annotations;
- it presents the searcher with the results with the most appropriate URL for that user.
The users current location and his language settings determine the most appropriate URL. A user can have multiple languages in his browser’s settings. I, for instance, have Dutch, English and German in there. The order in which these languages appear in my settings determines the most appropriate language.
One thing is very important when implementing hreflang: don’t be too specific! Let’s say you have three types of pages:
- German
- German, specifically aimed at Austria
- German, specifically aimed at Switzerland
You could choose to implement them using three hreflang attributes like this:
- de-de targeting German speakers in Germany
- de-at targeting German speakers in Austria
- de-ch targeting German speakers in Switzerland
However, which of these three results should Google show to someone searching in German in Belgium? The first page would probably be the best. To make sure that every German searching user who does not match either de-at or de-ch gets that one, change that hreflang attribute to just de. Specifying just the language is in many cases a smart thing to do.
It’s good to know that when you create sets of links like this, the most specific one wins. The order in which the search engines sees the links doesn’t matter, it’ll always try to match from most specific to least specific.
Technical implementation
1. Valid hreflang
The hreflang attribute needs to contain a value that consists of the language, optionally combined with a region.
- The language attribute needs to be in ISO 639-1 List of ISO 639-1 codes
- The region is optional and should be in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 formatISO 3166-1 alpha-2
2. Return links
The second basic rule is about return links. Regardless of your type of implementation, each URL needs return links to every other URL, note that it should point at the canonical versions, more on that below. The more languages you have the more you might be tempted to limit those return links: don’t. If you have 80 languages, you’ll have hreflang links for 80 URLs. There’s no getting around that.
**3. hreflang **link to self
The third and final basic rule is about self-links. Just like those return links might feel weird at some point, the hreflang link to the current page feels weird for some developers. It’s required though and not having it will mean your implementation will not work.
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
-
Should internal links in my table of contents be tagged as nofollow?
Hi All, I have the LuckyWP Table of Contents plugin installed. I recently noticed that you can tag your internal links with and nofollow. I understand that it's always a good idea to link internally and to pass link juice to my own content. But with detailed posts that have over 20 headings, I'm thinking that internal linking for headings may actually hurt me because it takes my links well above 100. Any ideas what the best practises are in this scenario? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Canonical tag use for ecommerce product page detail
Hi, I have a category page I want to rank. This page has 24 different products quite similar but not exactly the same.
Technical SEO | | amastone
I want to use canonical tag in any product to the parent category.
Is this a right use of the canonical?
Category page I'm talking about is : Finger bits If I understand how to use canonical tags I can improve all my category pages. thanks marco0 -
Custom hreflang tags in WP & using with Yoast
Hi My clients dev has added custom fields for adding hreflang tags to head of pages such as: "Rel Type", "The URL", and "Language Code" Am i right in thinking that until a different language/country version of the site is created these can remain empty or should they still be populated once added say with some sort of global reference or best left blank since will leave the head content global by default ? Also how important is it to add charset to the language code ? since seems optional ? Also this set up is on WP multi-site with Yoast and devs asked me the below: _One thing to note is that Yoast generates its own "canonical" tags - so if _
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
_you are going to use hreflang tags and canonical tags then you don't need to _
_add a canonical using the custom fields I have set up - Yoast has that _
sorted. _But if you are going down the route of NOT having any canonical tags - and _
_using a x-defult for the hreflang tags, I will need to try and suppress the _
_Yoast canonical tag so you can do this. Much depends on your approach and _
what you think is best. So how do i know if using canonicals or x-default, i take it best simplest to leverage Yoast and hence not add canonicals to custom fields ? Isnt x-default just for indicating language selectors/redirector not specific to 1 region? So long as havnt got those then good to proceed with Yoasts generated canonicals ? Cheers dan0 -
Can I have an H1 tag below an H2?
Quick question for you all - Is there an issue with me having an H1 tag physically below an H2 tag on a web page??
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Can Not Save the SEO Settings on Attachement/Media Page
I am trying to save SEO settings to a wordpress gallery attachment page for a picture. When I fill up all info and hit save all the writing disappear from from the form. Is it a software bug or there is a solution for it??
Technical SEO | | ExpertSolutions0 -
Duplicate content + wordpress tags
According to SEOMoz platform, one of my wordpress websites deals with duplicate content because of the tags I use. How should I fix it? Is it loyal to remove tag links from the post pages?
Technical SEO | | giankar0 -
Canonical Tag Here?
Hello, I have a client who I have taken on (different to my other client in another question), My client has a ecommerce website and in nearly all of his products (around 30-40) he has a little information checklist like.. Made in the UK
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO
Prices from 9.99
Top quality
Free delivery on orders over.. This is the duplicate content, what is the best practise for this as the SEOmoz crawler is giving me a multiple of errors.0 -
How to set up a rel canonical in big commmerce?
I have no clue how to set this up in the Bigcommerce store platform
Technical SEO | | Firestarter-SEO0