Hreflang
Commonly known as one of the most complex areas of technical SEO, hreflang tags are used to inform search engines of different country and language versions of a site. There are a lot of complex factors to consider to ensure the correct implementation of these tags and our SEO Office Hours notes cover many real-world scenarios and Google’s recommended course of action.
For more on international website optimization, check out our further resources:
The Ultimate Guide to International SEO
An SEO’s Guide to Hreflang Tags
The Challenges of Website Internationalization for Users & Search Engines
The Most Common Mistakes in International SEO
Hreflang Alternates Can Still be Shown in Search While Technically Non-indexable Duplicates
Pages identified as duplicates which are not technically indexed may still be shown in search if they are an alternate hreflang version which is similar to the canonical version.
Each Language Version has to be Crawled & Indexed at Least Twice for Hreflang to Work
Different page versions need to be understood before hreflang annotations can be used, so individual language versions have to be crawled and re-indexed at least twice to see the annotations and confirm them. John recommends using hreflang for stable content but keeping quickly changing content i.e. news in one location.
Google Uses X-default if it Can’t Find a Relevant Country + Language or Language Result First
Google will first try to find a relevant result for the user’s particular country and language combination e.g English in Canada, then will look for a generic language e.g. English, then will use your x-default specified result if it can’t find either.
There are 3 Levels of Hreflang: Language, Language + Country & X-default
The 3 levels of hreflang targeting are language, language + country and x-default which is used to specify default targeting for pages that haven’t been explicitly targeted to a particular language.
Hreflang Doesn’t Cause Content Duplication as URLs Are Switched in SERPs
You don’t need to worry about content duplication with hreflang because Google will recognise URL clusters and the connections between them and swap the URLs in the search results to show the most relevant page for the user.
ccTLDs Can Target Other Countries Using Hreflang But Not Geotargeting
ccTLDs can use hreflang to target pages to different countries but they can’t geotarget those pages for other different countries.
Using Country Code Rather than x-default for Hreflang is Easier to Manage
When specifying the main language version of a site, having the x-default language code or the specific language code is the same to Google, but defining the language code is easier for site owners to keep track of.
Noindexing Some Pages with Hreflang Tags Won’t Affect Whole Configuration
It’s fine to noindex some pages within a set which have hreflang tags implemented. The noindexed URL will simply be removed from the set that Google uses, without affecting the other pages.
IP Addresses Are No Longer Used For Geotargeting or Local SEO
Server IP addresses used to be a signal in the early days of Google’s geotargeting. Now Google uses ccTLD, generic TLD, hreflang, as well as settings in Google My Business and Google Search Console in combination to infer geotargeting information which is much more useful than a single IP.
There are Several Options For Different Country Versions of Product Pages
There are several options for dealing with product pages with different country versions. Separate landing pages with hreflang mean that the value of the page is diluted. Using IP redirects and having all versions on the same page will result in Googlebot only crawling the US version. Serving country-dependent elements in JavaScript and blocking them from being crawled is a further option.