bengarves.com/work/localization-research
Localization Research
[SEO-8] Spike: hreflang Attribute Rollout Plan
From Ben Garves’s work at Udemy. Re-created from the original document, with people’s names, internal links and non-public numbers removed or generalized. Sections by others are labeled.
SpikeSEO-8
- Company
- Udemy
- Created
- Resolved
- Status
- Done
- Jira type
- Task
- Priority
- P2 - Medium
- Story points
- 2
- Epic
- Global hreflang Rollout (SEO-22)
- Project
- SEO Squad
- Sprint
- SEO Sprint 2
- Requirement source
- Engineering
- Resolution
- Done
A spike to decide whether Udemy should declare hreflang in XML sitemaps or in each page’s head, so crawlers can see the breadth of its translated and localized content, and to open follow-up tickets for the chosen approach.
- Localization
- hreflang
- International SEO
- Sitemaps
Description
As a crawler, I’d like to see hreflang attributes used on udemy.com so that I can understand the breadth of translated and localized content available for me to reference and refer traffic to.
Google documentation on localized and translated pages: developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions
Summary: When a translated or localized version of a page exists, the original version of the page should self-label itself using the hreflang attribute as the “x-default” and refer to translated versions using the hreflang attribute. I’ve confirmed Google prefers this be used for both translated and localized pages.
Options
There are two common methods for using hreflang on a website:
- Add hreflang callouts for pages and translated versions in the sitemap
- On a per-page basis in each page’s
<head>
This ticket is for determining what is the best approach for Udemy and opening follow-up tickets for completing that work.
Outcome
Summarized from the engineer’s comment on the ticket.
The spike’s write-up recommended the XML sitemap approach.