When to Use (or Not to Use) hreflangs
Posted: Sun Dec 15, 2024 5:12 am
Hreflang attributes are not annoying, but they are not useful for avoiding duplicate content problems for pages that are direct translations of others.
Google continues to suggest using hreflang to help crawlers , but says it does not consider multiple versions of the same page to be duplicates since much of its content is translated.
Therefore, don't expect that inserting a lot of dbtodata hreflangs will save you from bad ranking results, because you probably don't have to worry about it from that point of view.
If you want to block Google searches from other countries
If you want to be reasonably certain that your site only reaches people in a particular country in Google searches, the hreflang tag isn't necessarily the best answer. Instead, Google Search Console can offer you a foolproof, if more challenging, option if you have a generic, high-level domain, such as .com and not something like .ca.
In the country tab in the international targeting report in Google Search Console, choose a target country and check the “geographic target” box.
This might be a good idea. It is, in fact, if you are 100% sure that you do not want organic search traffic from any country except one. But remember that Google will try to exclude your site from searches by people in other countries, not just implement searches in your preferred region.
Are you sure that no other person, in other countries, not even a fellow countryman living on the other side of the world, can find your products or services useful and therefore become your potential customer or buyer?
Maybe you want to go the complete opposite direction. In fact, you can do the opposite of the above and select 'Unlisted' in the drop-down box associated with the 'Geo Targeting' box. This way, the site will not have any regional limitations.
Google continues to suggest using hreflang to help crawlers , but says it does not consider multiple versions of the same page to be duplicates since much of its content is translated.
Therefore, don't expect that inserting a lot of dbtodata hreflangs will save you from bad ranking results, because you probably don't have to worry about it from that point of view.
If you want to block Google searches from other countries
If you want to be reasonably certain that your site only reaches people in a particular country in Google searches, the hreflang tag isn't necessarily the best answer. Instead, Google Search Console can offer you a foolproof, if more challenging, option if you have a generic, high-level domain, such as .com and not something like .ca.
In the country tab in the international targeting report in Google Search Console, choose a target country and check the “geographic target” box.
This might be a good idea. It is, in fact, if you are 100% sure that you do not want organic search traffic from any country except one. But remember that Google will try to exclude your site from searches by people in other countries, not just implement searches in your preferred region.
Are you sure that no other person, in other countries, not even a fellow countryman living on the other side of the world, can find your products or services useful and therefore become your potential customer or buyer?
Maybe you want to go the complete opposite direction. In fact, you can do the opposite of the above and select 'Unlisted' in the drop-down box associated with the 'Geo Targeting' box. This way, the site will not have any regional limitations.