Is it necessary to implement hreflang for translated content on different ccTLDs?

[selectitaly]

Hello there, new MOZ here. I hope someone of the international SEO MOZs can share their opinion on a doubt I have.

I've been reading a lot about hreflang and I understand the importance for subdomains and subfolders not only for targeting the same language in different countries (.com, .co.uk, .ca, etc) but also for websites partially or fully translated in other languages. However for these I've always seen examples where you want to have hreflang with subdomains or folders  e.g. ru.example.com ; example.com/ru

What if I have my translated websites on different ccTLDs - i.e. example.com example.ru.  example.br example .fr

Do I still need to implement hreflang or in this case is not necessary?

[KristinaKledzik]

The key here is that you should use hreflang when you have two pages with exactly the same content, but in 2 different languages. If those different languages are on different subdomains or ccTLDs, the rule still stands.

But, if you have different content for different countries, just use the ccTLDs without hreflang.

For future reference, whenever I have questions about international SEO, I turn to Kate Morris, who wrote this helpful post: https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/choose-your-international-strategy-tool/

Thanks for reaching out to our community: it's always great having new Mozzers! Let me know if you have follow up questions.

Best,

Kristina

[selectitaly]

Kristina,

Thank you! We ended up implementing trough header. Hopefully we have done it right.
Very interesting material by Kate. But I have to admit that her tool made me wonder if we really need the hreflang. I asked her directly in one of her blogs.

Best,
Andrea