An SEO professional asked John Mueller during a hangout about hreflang tags.
Their situation is: say they have one website that they target in a specific language with that domain, and it also performs well in that language.
Then, they decide to create an English version of the site to target people more globally in a brand-new domain.
They asked if they should add hreflang tags in order to connect the two domains, or should they leave it alone to allow Google to figure it out by themselves?
And, is it possible for hreflang tags to impact their site’s performance?
John answered that hreflang is on a per page basis, not a per domain basis. It would only make sense if you have equivalent pages in other languages for other countries.
It’s not something that impacts the entire website.
If you have pages that have equivalent versions, hreflang tags are a great way to connect them.
Hreflang, however, does not increase rankings. What Google will do is try to swap out the URL against the best fitting one.
So, if someone is searching for your site name, and they have an English version and a French version, then they will be able to show French users searching in French the French version of the homepage.
This works across different subdomains, and is a good practice.
This happens at approximately the 9:45 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 3 9:45
Hi, John. My question is about hreflang tags, actually. Let’s say I have one website that I target a specific language with that domain and performs well in that particular language.
And then I decided to create the English version of the website to target people in a global new domain. So should I add hreflang tags to connect these two separate domains?
Or just leave it alone Google to figure out itself? And can these hreflang tags impact my website’s performance in a positive or negative way? So what would you do in a situation like that?
John 10:20
So hreflang is on a per page basis. So it would only make sense if you have equivalent pages in other languages or for other countries. So it’s not something that does the whole website kind of thing.
So if you have some pages that have equivalent versions, using hreflang is a good way to connect them. What happens with hreflang is that the ranking stays the same. But we try to swap out the URL against the most best fitting one.
So if someone is searching for your website name, and we have an English version, and, I don’t know, a French version, then if we can tell the users kind of in France or searching in French, then we will try to show the French version of the homepage.
And that works across different domains, that works within the same domain. That’s essentially a good practice.
SEO Professional 3 11:15
So but is it not necessary…
John 11:19
It’s not necessary. I mean, it doesn’t change the rankings. But it helps to make sure that your preferred version is shown to the user.
It doesn’t guarantee it, but it makes it a little bit easier for us to show like the preferred language version, so if someone is searching in French, and we have your French and your English pages, we wouldn’t accidentally show the English page to them.
SEO Professional 3 11:44
Okay, thanks. Thanks for this.
