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 Tags Without a Reciprocal Will Be Ignored
Hreflang tags which are not reciprocated will be ignored, because Google assume it’s incorrect.
Hreflanged Pages in the Same Language Don’t Need to Be Duplicates
If you connect pages together with hreflang which are in the same language e.g. UK/US/Australia, they don’t need to be duplicates. They are allowed quite a lot of variation as if they were different languages.
Hreflang Require Reciprocal Links
Hreflang works at a page level. If any pages don’t have recriprocal hreflang tags, they’ll be ignored, but it won’t affect any other pages with the correct configuration
A Single Page Can Serve Multiple Hreflang Combinations
When setting international targeting with an hreflang tag, you can add multiple hreflangs to the same page. So a single page could have both an en-us, en-uk and x-default hreflang values.
Unwanted Sitelinks Pages Can Be Nonidexed
Sitelinks which do not disappear after being demoted, can be removed by adding a noindex. If the Sitelinks are showing incorrect international pages, hreflang tags can be used to identify the preferred version.
Hreflang URLs Should Always Be Canonical URLs
Don’t include any URLs that redirect, are non-indexable, canonicalised, otherwise they might be ignored.
Hreflang Should Canonicalise to Preferred HTTP/HTTPS Variation
When you have multiple language sites with hreflang, and you have http and https versions of the sites, you don’t need to worry about the hreflang for the non-canonical version. So if you canonicalise from http to https, then you don’t need any hreflang on the http.