Jul 20, 2021

hreflang tag for very unique international website

ncabane published thread hreflang tag for very unique international website

Hey there!

This is my very first post. Hopefully, this will be helpful for more people than just me.

For a current client, I am facing a very particular situation when it comes to hreflang settings. In this case, the client has a mix of direct and pretty common alternates plus other not so common but with a language in common.

This scenario might require the use of HTML lang just language + hreflang lang to be language-region in my opinion.

Example My client will be selling a "product" and this product will have different possible alternates. This is just an example of course, as way more alternates should appear.

  • client.com/es/es/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-es)
  • client.com/en/es/product (html lang = en (hreflang lang = en-es)
  • client.com/it/es/product (html lang = it) (hreflang lang = it-es)
  • client.com/ar/es/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-es)
  • client.com/de/es/product (html lang = de) (hreflang lang = de-es
  • client.com/it/it/product (html lang = it) (hreflang lang = it-it)
  • client.com/en/it/product (html lang = en) (hreflang lang = en-it)
  • client.com/es/it/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-it)
  • client.com/ar/it/product (html lang = ar) (hreflang lang = ar-it)
  • client.com/de/it/product (html lang = de) (hreflang lang = de-it)
  • client.com/es/pl/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-pl)
  • client.com/pl/pl/product (html lang = pl) (hreflang lang = pl-pl)
  • client.com/es/be/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-be)
  • client.com/nl/be/product (html lang = nl) (hreflang lang = nl-be)
  • client.com/es/at/product (html lang = es) (hreflang lang = es-at)
  • client.com/de/at/product (html lang = de) (hreflang lang = de-at)

I asked this question in Google Webmaster Forum and as far as I know, my hreflang proposal should be fine, however, I have big doubts when it comes to HTML lang tags. I am aware that Google ignores these tags (HTML lang), but I want to avoid any future issues so I really wonder if this "just language" HTML lang tag + "language+region" combination would work fine as I've found in tools like the Merkle's checker or ahrefs audit that they spot these combinations as wrong.

I am aware that many websites use the same HTML lang + hreflang lang "language+region" combination just as:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart/

What would you think?

ncabane

ncabane

@ncabane

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