Understanding hreflang
-
Got a question regarding hreflang tag and specifically about the language part:
If I have 2 parallel pages, one in German and one in English for UK users. for example:How does google see the “language” part:
1.Based on user language – Google will display this page in the SERP according to what google believe is the user’s language based on the user’s browsers language setting, search query language ect..? in this case the German speaking user in UK will get the DE version
Or
2.The language setting in the hreflang tag just means the specified URL language
So Google will display the EN-GB version in UK both to the English & German user?If you jave any other ideas - i will be glad to hear:)
Hope I’m clear enough.
Thanks!
-
There's actually even more scenarios to it than just that, but thankfully there's a great Moz post on this from April 2014: http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights that covers your questions, and more.
To your specifics, yes a user can set a specific language and Google will try to serve results weighted to their language settings, regardless of location (the German user in the UK per your example). They can also serve German results to anyone in Germany by default (location based).
Again, the blog post breaks it all down very well. Go take a look and you should be able to parse what you need for your exact situation. Cheers!
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
-
Does Google Understand H2 As Subtitle?
I use some HTML 5 tags on my custom template. I implement <header class="entry-header-outer"> Flavour & Chidinma – 40 Yrs 40 Yrs by Flavour & Chidinma </header> html code. h1 tag serves as the title, while h2 tag servers as the subtitle of the post. Take a look at it here: https://xclusiveloaded.com/flavour-chidinma-40-yrs/ I want to know if it's ok or should I remove the h2 tag. Guys, what is your thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Kingsmart4 -
Seeking guidance setting up hreflang en-gb for international english website and en-us for North American site
Our website is configured like so: MyCompany.com Websites /en-gb - International English /fr-fr /zh-hans /m/en-us - North American site - completely different structure The first three bullets share a Drupal instance where the North American site uses a different PHP framework and has it's own unique look and structure. Currently none of the websites have hreflang tags which means that sometimes when searching in the US the en-gb results creep in. I want to turn on hreflang tags for the international english website (en-gb) but my fear is that Google may not return the en-gb results to English speaking users if they are not in the UK. We want these results to appear for anyone who is not in the US who speaks English. Just a note, Canada is not included in this since they'll be added to the North American site soon and will have their own hreflang tags.
On-Page Optimization | | bearpaw0 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
I am trying to better understand solving the duplicate content issues highlighted in your recent crawl report of our site - www.thehomesites.com.
Below are some of the urls highlighted as having duplicate content -
On-Page Optimization | | urahul
http://www.thehomesites.com/zip_details/76105
http://www.thehomesites.com/zip_details/44135
http://www.thehomesites.com/zip_details/75227
http://www.thehomesites.com/zip_details/94501 These are neighborhood reports generated for 4 different zip codes. We use a standard template to create these reports. What are some of the steps we can take to avoid these pages being categorized as duplicate content?0 -
Is it better to have an hreflang go to the home page in a different language if there's no corresponding page
If I have some pages in English, but not in Spanish on my website: Should my hreflang go to the home page on the Spanish site? Or should I not have an "es-MX" hreflang for that page? Ideally I would have all the pages translated, but this has not all been done yet.
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Does hreflang work on TLDs?
What is your opinion regarding hreflang? We have a .company.com site and franchised other English sites, like company. co.uk, company.com.au etc - and we share one database. Our other English sites don't want to have to change on-page content by the rough 30% for Google and wanted to know if including the hreflang would mean they would not have to change any content anymore - only the metatags? I don't think that's possible on TLDs, and we can't have our .com content being duplicated.
On-Page Optimization | | GraphicMail0 -
Trying to understand why i do not rank well for this keyword
Hi, i am working on a page at the moment and i am trying to work out why i do not rank well for the keyword gastric band hypnotherapy or gastric band hypnosis. The page is http://www.in2town.co.uk/Gastric-Band-Hypnotherapy any help on what i need to change to start ranking well would be of a great help
On-Page Optimization | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Don't understand this ... :-(
Hello, I'm going nuts as I don't understand what's going on with this domain of a client. We have this classical htaccess redirect from http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com But I'm getting Page Authority for both domains, and the non-www, which shouldn't be crawled, is gettting higher PA .. http://www.myanamar.rundreisen.de - PA 34 http://myanamr-rundreisen.de - PA 36 I attach a file, you see there that google robot is recognizing the 301 redirecht from non-www to www ... But, the site isn't doing good at all in google, it seems the home page has a penalty ... duplicate content due to non-www and www home page? So it would be great if somebody has a hint for me ... my client is losing trust in me Thx! GbDC4.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | hgw570