hreflang
hreflang is an attribute, used with rel="alternate", that tells search engines which language and regional versions of a page exist so each searcher can be shown the right one. For example, it can point UK searchers to an en-GB page and US searchers to an en-US page with the same content.
How do you implement hreflang?
Google supports three methods and treats them as equivalent: link elements in the page's head, HTTP Link headers for files such as PDFs, and entries in an XML sitemap. Each value is an ISO 639-1 language code, optionally followed by an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 region code, such as en, en-GB or de-AT. A region code can't be used on its own.
The x-default value, which Google introduced on 10 April 2013, marks a fallback page, such as a country selector, for users whose language matches none of the listed versions.
Common hreflang mistakes
- Missing return links: if two pages don't both point to each other, Google ignores the annotations
- Leaving out the self-reference: each version must list itself as well as every other version
- Writing en-UK: UK has no effect in hreflang, so pages for the UK need en-GB
- Using a region code alone, such as GB, without a language code
What hreflang does not do
Google says it doesn't use hreflang or the HTML lang attribute to detect the language of a page; it works that out itself. hreflang helps Google choose which version to show to whom. It doesn't make a weak translation rank, and each page still needs to be written in the language and for the market it claims.
Example
A UK retailer that also sells to Ireland and the US has three English homepages with different prices and delivery terms. Each lists all three with the values en-GB, en-IE and en-US, plus an x-default pointing to the international homepage, so a searcher in Dublin sees euro prices rather than sterling.
Related terms
Further reading
Our Organic Search service puts this into practice for brands in the UK and US.
