Proper use of HREF-LANG tag and Geotargeting.

[marshseo]

I am working with a global company that has different country sites (these are distinguished via country subdomains - country.site.com). Upon looking at the Google Analytics data, I noticed that even though the different country geotargeting settings aren't set up correctly, we are reaching the right target market for each site.

My hunch is because even though there is no geotargeting, the language for each country site is making the content relavant (this in combination with the subdomain).

I have read through various resources here on MOZ, and noticed that the primary purpose of the href-lang tag is important if you have similar/identical pages that are targeted towards different countries/languages. If the pages are translations however, how important or impactful is it to set the geotargeting and href-lang tags for the other sites altogether?

[Travis_Bailey]

The Matt Cutts stated that href-lang is important because it will help Google bot know that the page is intended for a different language, rather than a poorly translated page 'written' just to 'rank'. If it seems like everything is okay, then err on the side of caution and use href-lang. You may just see an improvement.

However, the critical piece is making sure the pages are well written/translated for their intended target. Perhaps search engines have gotten better at weeding out/penalizing poor translations, but I would use href-lang just so I could sleep at night. At least you'll know you did that much.

If you really want to go for the gold, get someone fluent in the target languages and see what they think. You may end up with some edits. There are a ton of Spanish dialects and what reads well in Mexico might not read so well in Spain.