Ask Yoast: when should I use hreflang?

Do you own a site in multiple languages or aimed at different regions? In that case, you want search engines to point people to the most “fitting” language and site. On top of that, you want to prevent Google from seeing similar content on sites for different markets as duplicate content. hreflang is the technical SEO solution for sites that have similar content in multiple languages and/or aimed at various regions. In this Ask Yoast I’ll give an easy example to explain this.

Our support team received the following question from a Yoast SEO user:

“When should I use hreflang?”

Check out the video or read the answer below!

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When should you use hreflang?

Read this transcript to learn how you’ll benefit from using hreflang.

You should use it whenever you have a website that is translated into several languages or that has several locals. For example, if you have a website in English, one for the UK and one for the US, you want to tell Google that that’s the case. You want to make sure Google is sending people to the right website.

Especially if you have two English sites, it really doesn’t work as well if people end up on the UK version of your site when they’re in the US, and vice versa. Google can take care of that for you, if you set up your hreflang well. It isn’t easy, so follow the process in our ultimate guide to hreflang. Once you do that, you will reap the benefits.

Good luck!

Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast we help you with your SEO question! Did you get stuck on an SEO issue? Are you in doubt between two SEO strategies? Don’t fret, just ask us your question! You can send your question to ask@yoast.com.

Read more: ‘hreflang: the ultimate guide’ »