Google Adds "hreflang" Link Element For Multilingual Content

Google announced a new markup to communicate multilingual content to Google’s spiders.

The new link element is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” where you define the language and location in the hreflang area.

Here are examples of how you may use it respectively:

• http://www.example.com/ – contains the general homepage of a website, in Spanish
• http://es-es.example.com/ – is the version for users in Spain, in Spanish
• http://es-mx.example.com/ – is the version for users in Mexico, in Spanish
• http://en.example.com/ – is the generic English language version

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://www.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="http://es-es.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-MX" href="http://es-mx.example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" />

For more details on how to use this, see this Google help document or Search Engine Land

Further information about international SEO and hreflang tags visit:

http://www.themediaflow.com/2012/08/an-international-seo-implementation-tale-sitemaps-relalternate-hreflangx/

Other useful resources:

http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2137882/Newest-International-SEO-Challenge-Hreflang-Canonical-Tags

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-implement-the-hreflang-element-using-xml-sitemaps-123030