Self Referencing HREFlang Tags: Should you have them on a single country site?

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Self Referencing HREFlang Tags: Should you have them on a single country site?

mattlimbert

10:42 am on Nov 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

So we're having an in-house debate at the moment and I wanted to get some opinions because I'm seeing conflicting information as I research the topic.

We've got a client who is UK based - But with a .com domain.
Now the site is geared around UK traffic and it's obvious that they are UK based. However, over the last few months rankings have been shaky in the UK and we've been seeing US traffic climb.

Someone suggested adding self referential HREFlang tags to every page, targeting the UK.
Couple of people think it can't harm the site as we'll only be targeting the country where they service customers, however, there's quite a few articles out there stating it can have a negative affect.

Has anyone any thoughts on the topic?

not2easy

12:01 pm on Nov 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hello mattlimbert and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Adding HREFlang tags to a site with only one language is not the intended use of those tags and could be seen as an attempt to manipulate robots since it means nothing to the human visitors. People visiting your site would gain nothing from those tags. It makes their implementation questionable at least.

If you take a look at some major sites' practices, you might notice that they do slip in a perfectly legitimate "hint" though. The <html tag to tell the browser how to parse the content can and probably should have the notation as

<html lang="en-GB">

This is not aimed at bots, but browsers and perfectly legitimate. If you look at major .com UK sites such as BBC.com for example, it uses such a tag.

robzilla

12:39 pm on Nov 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

Sounds like a bad idea. It doesn't make any sense and saying "it can't harm the site" is not a great reason to go ahead with it, especially when there's another camp saying it could hurt you.

I think the above suggestion is a good one, though I'm not sure it would make even the slightest difference in rankings.

Strictly speaking, this is only about language, not geography.

And UK traffic being shaky while US traffic is climbing doesn't necessarily suggest there's a targeting issue.

mattlimbert

1:00 pm on Nov 11, 2021 (gmt 0)

Thanks both not2easy and robzilla.
Looks like the html tag is a good start to see if / what effect it has.