Will hreflang indication help single language site?

[Jonathan.Smith]

I have read a few articles that say indicating a language per webpage with hreflang really only helps sites that use multiple languages.

Although my site is only in English, I see that it is ranking for a few foreign language keywords in Google Search Console (not sure exact traffic but roughly 15% of visitors from Search are non English preferred).

My thought is that indicating language will help my single-language site because it will weed out the non-english speakers who are probably bouncing from the site. Overall I am thinking it might improve the quality of my search traffic.

Do you think my logic is sound, or is adding hreflang not beneficial to my site?

All feedback welcomed. Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hi Jonathan,

Technically speaking, adding the hreflang sentence will not help your SERPs. Because it's redundant.

Also, I'd advise you to not add it. The reason is simple, the more lines of code, the slower the page is. And there is a common sense that google does not like redundant code.

Think it by yourself, in which way will it help you, that knowing that an english site, having a signal expressing that their language is english? Its like your mom would have a sign with ''I am a woman''

Hope it helps.
GR

[Jonathan.Smith]

Thanks for the response Gaston!

I am aware this will not help my page rankings. My thought is that it will improve the quality of my site's search traffic as explained in my original post.

Hmm.. do you really think adding "" to my html will slow down load speed? If that is the case, you are saying adding one link to your page will slow down the load time. I just don't think adding this small piece of code will have a significant effect on page speed.

If I check the International Targeting tab in Search Console, it says no hreflang tags being used, so I'm not sure how redundant this would be. I know Google can pick up languages, but I think of adding hreflang tags as insurance that the right audience will be reached.

I like your example about my mom (haha) and I would like to expand on it. If you were looking for "a woman" and came across my mother, you would be able to read the sign and be satisfied your search came to an end. However, if a non-english speaker was searching for "a woman" and came across my mother, although she has the features of a woman, s/he may be confused by the sign with foreign characters and leave immediately (this is bounce rate IRL).

God (AKA Google) would then take note that 50% of the people searching for a woman, that visited my mother, left confused. So s/he would stop leading people in search of "a woman" to my mother.

Does this depiction change your opinion on my thoughts at all?

[gfiorelli1]

You are is wrong and misleadin, sorry.

The he is never redundant and an English site could also be targeting another country than the USA.

You're correct saying it's not useful in this case, but not for the reason you give

[gfiorelli1]

Here the answers:

1. the hreflang tag doesn't slow down websites performance. it makes have an incidence only in the case you have hundreds of hreflang markups in the html code, so that in t case it is better to use the sitemap.xml implementation.

2. you site is only in English, hence you can't use the hreflang, because it is an "alternate", therefore it always needs a pair (eg: "e-US". using it only in self-referential way (as sometimes we do with rel "canonical" is wrong and Google will present it as a mistake and not consider it

3. if you really want to target only the US public, then you must geotarget the domain in Search Console, going to its "International" section and selecting United States as the country targeted by the site.

[GastonRiera]

Ups, then im sorry.
I've never intended to give false information. I had incorrect information.

Thanks for correcting me.
GR

[Jonathan.Smith]

Thanks for the response, Gianluca. When you point out that rel=alternate is used, that does make it clearer that this is a tag used for a pair of URLs. That makes sense that this feature probably wasn't built to use for my scenario.

So I am guessing, in my situation I can't really inform Google to only target people who speak a certain language. I kind of just have to leave it up to Google to decipher. Even if I set the target country in Search Console to the US, this would exclude other English-speaking countries who are still in my target audience, which includes global English speakers (i.e. Singapore).

Is there anything we haven't brought up that you would recommend for my situation?

[to909]

Are there any major cons to include the hreflang attribute if there isn't a translated version? My site has some pages that are translated, which we include proper hreflang tags, but some pages that do not currently have a translated page. It sounds like it would take more work to remove the tags on those pages without a translated version than to keep it. Will this cause major issues with Google?