Are 302s from homepage to localized versions ok?

[nathandh]

Hello all!

Go back 5 years and you'll read that a 302 is a big no-no if you want to pass on link-juice. Nowadays you'll find reports that 302's do pass (some) juice and that they are the preferred way to handle language redirects.

However, I'm wondering if I'm now hurting my linkbuilding efforts by only building links to website.com. Whereas all requests to the main domain are 302 redirected to website.com/fr-fr/, website.com/de-de/, website.com/en-gb/ (default),....

From a users' perspective this works well, the detection is based on their accept language header and if no match is found they are redirected to the default language (website.com/en-gb/) and presented with a 'pick a language prompt'. Google themselves are also using 302 redirects to send international requests to google.com to their local counterparts so I'm guessing this is a good setup.

Should I keep building links to website.com (1) OR should I be building links to all local sub folders (website.com/fr-fr/, website.com/de-de/,..) (2).

Ideally I should be doing both. But I'd like to know if just building links to my main domain is still an effective use of time. (1) would be both more convenient and better from a users' perspective; if an international blog links to my website I want them to link to my main domain; after which the user will be redirected to their preferred language.

Hope to hear some opinions on this!

Best,

Nathan

[Mobilio]

You need definitely to check this article:
https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
https://moz.com/blog/open-source-library-tool-check-hreflang
and fix 302 with correct hreflang annotations. Also don't forget default language.

About linkbuilding. After you fix this "hreflang" then you should do both - building links for main (default) language and build links for country languages from country specific resources. Like french sites linking to french directory/pages.