Getting hreflang Right: Examples and Insights for International SEO

Oh internet, how far we’ve come in regards to geotargeting.  Many, many moons ago, as many of us will remember, geotargeting was something that wasn’t used very much.  At this point, geotargeting for websites was still in it’s infancy, mainly because, for SEO, it was nearly impossible.  Back then, it was pretty difficult trying to structure your site to make it work for international search.  Then along came a shining, beautiful piece of hope….Hreflang!

According the w3schools.com, the definition of hreflang is as follows:

“The hreflang attribute specifies the language of the linked document.”

In a nutshell, when you have a website that serves a number of different types of users from around the world, where the content being translated or targeted to a particular region, you’ll need to utilize hreflang.  Hreflang is used to serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers.

It seems that there is some confusion when it comes to hreflang annotation.  The confusion lies with how it should work, what’s the correct display behavior, and whether or not the implementation requires configuration,  such as WMT targeting or the canonical tag.

In a Moz post written by David Sottimano that centers around using hreflang for international SEO, you will be covering a list of things:

•  How to check international SERPs the right way
• What should hreflang do and not do
• Examples of hreflang behaviour
• Important tools for the serious international SEO
• Tips from my many screw-ups, and successes

Keeping in mind that David’s post isn’t intended for beginner or intermediate level SEO, you can check it out by following the link provided below.

Moz Blog: Getting hreflang Right: Examples and Insights for International SEO