Google’s John Mueller Offers Hreflang SEO Advice

John Mueller of Google posted a trim detailed response to an hreflang implementation question on Reddit. The response is so detailed, I’m anxious that if I strive and dull it down, I will fetch it unpleasant.

And in point of fact, hreflang is no longer my thing, that is something that I produce no longer have noteworthy of any trip with on the technical SEO front. But the response appears to be like trim attention-grabbing that I wished to highlight it for folk that produce pretty a few hreflang and multilingual SEO work.

The question turned into once “Hreflang for language subdirectories already nested interior a query subdirectory: gruesome idea?” Click to the Reddit thread to scrutinize the fat question.

Right here is John’s response, the aspects I discover attention-grabbing is that he said (1) only produce this for the home page on epic of it’ll be trim advanced, (2) redirect the / home page for US customers to /us for US customers. Right here is the fat response:

My advice will be now to no longer shift /de & /fr into /eu/de or /eu/fr. There is no longer any SEO abet that you would possibly well fetch from that, and situation-moves cherish this are pretty a few work. If something else, I’d have in thoughts shifting “/*” (en-us) correct into a “/us” folder. That implies you’ve got gotten clearer separation of the parts (“/us/*” is all US, “/fr/*” is all French, and masses others). It could make tracking a microscopic bit more uncomplicated, and make it more uncomplicated for search engines and yahoo to note the sections (vs shifting /fr into /eu/fr, which could well presumably make it even more difficult to note sections).

Also, hreflang is on a per-page foundation, so that you would possibly presumably produce it on all pages. You mentioned it as being sections, and doubtless you are already doing it smartly, so right here’s correct for completeness. At the same time as you happen to’re no longer doing it on all pages, I’d have in thoughts checking your stats for pages that fetch confused doubtlessly the most (unpleasant country company), and no longer less than add it there. Chances are right here’s largely your homepage, so should you are only doing it there, you are doubtlessly getting many of the value of hreflang already.

And … should you produce any of this and automatically redirect “/” (correct the root homepage) to the devoted version, or no longer it’s a must to ensure that or no longer it’s specified as the x-default for the world of homepages. With out doing that, to Google it could look for cherish “/” is a separate page from the others.

(edit to account for only on that final allotment… — right here’s specifically should you’ve got gotten /us for US, and produce geo-IP redirects, which I most often produce no longer indicate)

If for US customers, “/” (correct that page) redirects to “/us”, AND you’ve got gotten hreflang one day of /us, /fr with x-default assigned to /us, what can happen is that Google sees “/” as being an English page, additionally acknowledges /us, /fr as separate pages, after which presentations each and each “/” and “/(one among the others” within the search outcomes. You would also care for a ways from this by surroundings “/” as the x-default (despite the truth that it redirects). Then Google will scrutinize “/” as the default “/us” for US, “/fr” for France.

This additionally methodology that that you will be no longer have “/eu” as x-default (there can only be one #highlander #xdefault), but that you would possibly well level-headed use that by specifying it as hreflang for a bunch of your general worldwide locations (that you would possibly well specify more than one worldwide locations per URL). So within the quit that you would possibly well have “/” = x-default, “/us” for US, “/fr” for France, “/eu” for a bunch of countries, and redirect from “/” to the devoted version.

All of right here’s correct for the homepage, I’d no longer produce it for any of the opposite pages of the location on epic of or no longer it’s a ways so advanced & exhausting to control, and on epic of the homepage is doubtlessly the page that will get doubtlessly the most search impressions.

What produce you discover attention-grabbing about this response?

Dialogue board discussion at Reddit.