Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do hreflang attributes affect ranking?
-
We have a site in English. We are considering translating the site into Dutch. If we use a hreflang attribute does that mean we have to create a duplicate page in Dutch for each English page, or does Google auto-translate? How would duplicate pages, even if they are in a different language, affect ranking?
-
There are a number of points to mention here:
Firstly. hreflang is not a ranking signal, and therefore it will not provide a ranking boost.
Secondly, Google will not auto-translate the pages because hreflang was implemented. You'll need to do the translation yourself.
Thirdly, you don't have to translate all pages of your website to Duth, only the ones that would make sense to translate. For example, there could be blog posts that would resonate with an English speaking audience, but not a Dutch one, so there wouldn't be a need to translate these posts. The opposite could be true too.
What hreflang does, is that it helps search engines understand which pages are meant to rank for which languages and in which countries. The actual implementation can get tricky if you have multiple languages and several countries and I would recommend looking into a few tutorials/documentation on this, including:
-
Moz's hreflang guide: https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
-
Yoast's hreflanf guide: https://yoast.com/hreflang-ultimate-guide/
-
Google's documentation on hreflang: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that helps!
-
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
-
Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags
Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
Is this setup of Hreflang xml sitemap correct?
Hi, I'm trying to setup hreflang for 2 domains. One is purely a US site and the other domain has the language-country as subdomains. For example: http://www.websiteUSA.com (Targets English - USA) https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA (Targets English - Canada) https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA (Targets French - Canada) https://www.websiteINT/es (Targets Spanish) ..and so on and so forth for about 12 of these international URLs. I created an XML sitemap that looks something like this: <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><url><loc>http://www.websiteUSA.com</loc></url></urlset> <url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA</loc></url> <url><loc>https://www.websiteINT.com/fr-CA</loc></url> Question 1: Is this correct? In my actual file, I have all the countries listed and self-referencing. Question 2: I'm hosting this file at https://www.websiteINT.com/hreflang.xml AND at http://www.websiteUSA.com/hreflang.xml. Is this correct? Question 3: Will this help the SERPs direct english speakers from the US to http://www.websiteUSA.com while show SERPs for say English Speakers in Canada to https://www.websiteINT.com/en-CA? Question 4: For some reason, when I put up the xml site, it only listed each URL once instead of the full XML file. Should I have uploaded a text file instead? It doesn't seem to render correctly. Thank you!
International SEO | | SylviaH0 -
Hreflang tag on every page?
Hello Moz Community, I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/. For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated) From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags: /> For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
International hreflang - will this handle duplicate content?
The title says it all - if i have duplicate content on my US and UK website, will adding the hreflang tag help google figure out that they are duplicate for a reason and avoid any penalties?
International SEO | | ALLee1 -
How do I get a UK website to rank in Dubai?
We are trying to get a UK-based children's furniture website to rank in Dubai. We have had a couple of orders from wealthy expats in Dubai and it seems to be the correct target market. Does anyone have any specific knowledge of this area? We are promoting the same website as for the UK market. Also does anyone know any user behaviour stats on expatriates using search engines? Do they carry on using the version of Google they are used to, or do most change to the local version of Google? Thanks in advance
International SEO | | Wagada0 -
Which hreflang tag to use for .eu domain
Hi there, We're trying to solve a problem with one of our domains, we have a .eu CCTLD and we're trying to implement hreflang tags. On our US and UK sites, we use "en-us" and "en-gb", but it's not clear how to approach this european problem, as there is not a "en-eu" tag. The site is in English, but serves several European countries speaking different languages. What's the best hreflang code to use in this situation? Any help much appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | dennis.globalsign0