Hreflang - Is it needed even if the site is only one language
-
This topic came up in a discussion I had with a fellow SEO colleague, I don't believe it makes sense to have Hreflang if you don't have a second language but according to my friend they mentioned that it is great if your only targeting one country. Any opinions out in the Moz community? It seems like overkill to me
-
This may be a little bit outside the scope of the original question, but another use for hreflang tags is when you only have a single language, but localized content in different countries.
So, for example let's say you have web sites/pages in the US and Australia. Both are in English. But you differ the content for each market. In that case, you would use hreflang tags to relate a similar page/site between the two countries. "en-us" and "en-au".
I realize that's not exactly what the original post asked. But adding this info to what has already been answered.
-
Hi Jonathan,
I agree with you, I'd say it's complete overkill for most sites that only have 1 country & language that they're targeting. If it could be a country that covers multiple languages then I would reconsider this. But with most companies that I've seen work with HREF Lang it's already a lengthy and intense process that usually is only worth it when you focus on creating content for multiple languages.
Martijn.
-
Hreflang means the tags that go between different pages and show Google the way to the same content in other languages. There are also your standard language tags, which perform a very similar function to the self-referencing hreflang. IMO, it should be enough to just use language tags e.g:
^ for French. You can even specify a region and a language like:
I would have thought this would be enough to tell Google what language and region a page is targeted at (you can come up with any number of combinations using the HTML ISO country codes and the HTML ISO language codes)
However, according to SEO best practice this is wrong. Even if you only target one language / country, and you do not require the utility of hreflang tags (pointing Google to other language variants of pages) - you are apparently still supposed to have a self-referencing hreflang tag on your pages (confirming the active language)
Since this is what language tags (which existed long before hreflangs) are supposed to do, it seems really stupid to me. But that's the way it is, for whatever reason
In summary, yes do use self referencing hreflangs AND the appropriate language tags in concert
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
-
IP Canonicalization for HTTPS site?
I received an unsolicited SEO report for one of my sites. My site was faulted for not having IP canonicalization set up. I reviewed this carefully. My site runs on Apache, is https and is on a dedicated IP. The mod rewrite rules for Apache all deal with the http version of the site. When I type my site's IP into a browser, I get the the https version, but with a unsecure cert warning as the certificate does not include the IP. Should I implement the http IP canonicalization rule. Another rewrite rule would then redirect the request to the https version?
On-Page Optimization | | FatRodent20130 -
New site pages are indexed but not ranking for anything
I just built this site for a client http://primedraftarchitecture.com. It went live 3 weeks ago and the pages are getting indexed as per Webmaster Tools. But I'm not seeing it rank for anything. We're adding blog articles regularly and used Moz Local for local links and have been building links in other local directories (probably about 15 so far). Usually I get some rankings, although very low, after just a week or two for new sites. Does anyone see anything glaring that may be causing a problem?
On-Page Optimization | | DonaldS1 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Redirecting pages (old site to new site)
I have a question- there is one location, one set of pages for both the old and new site on the same host environment so when I did the redirect it get into a loop trying to redirect from itself to itself Not sure how its gonna affect SEO. Will pages get hit for duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Yanez0 -
If you were working on a wine site would you include the wine year in the URL?
I've come across a case where I'm asking myself what the best direction would be to go and while there is no right direction I would like to here some feedback from others. I'm working with some great content pages all about wine. As you probably know the difference between a 07 wine and a 95 is vastly different and up to this point I'm using the full year in the url much like this: grapesinyourtoesexample.com/2007-cellar-pod-viognier-adelaide-hills/. What I'm worried about is my use of the year in the URL. I feel it's very important for it to be used in the page title and on page but I'm concerned that it might be setting me back with my use of it in the url. My concern is that search engines might be interpretting it as a datestamp rather than as a informational piece of data describing the asset. Looking at my competitors, my content is one of the only sites using the year and in most searches for various wines my content is in the second half of the SERPs. If you were creating this content would you use the year? If you were working with current content would you drop the year across all of the site and implement to necessary redirects? Just to be clear this is a client related project so my use of "my site|my content" refers to the client's content.
On-Page Optimization | | DotCar0 -
Do you handle website on-page/site optimization?
Our website is gaining traction and we are looking for an individual who is an expert at examining websites to see if the structure and on-page optimization is being optimized, and what. Please contact me if you are interested. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | balboafinance0 -
I changed my site from HTML to PHP and I need to get some help.
Ok...so the other day I went from HTML to PHP in every part of my website. I want to know the best option for me for redirecting my pages from HTML to php. I had my site scanned with SEOMoz and I was given many 404 errors which is not at all good. I do not have any pages of my site linking to any of these html pages. All of the site links have been updated. I have checked 3 times. I have never created a robots.txt file so I would love to get a little help with this part. I was thinking it would be best to tell Google not to worry about these pages in the file. I kept the pages up and I plan to remove all code with them so that no content shows up if someone visits but the issue with that is my site is already indexed as HTML. I want to have the HTML pages redirect to the PHP without worrying that my visitors will land on my site via Google onto an HTML page. I hope I am making sense. What is the best advice you can give me. I need all pages to redirect to PHP. I used an htaccess redirect from all HTML to PHP but when I get so many of them added I get an error on my site saying too many redirects. Seriously need help.
On-Page Optimization | | TrendyHost0