Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How does link juice flow through hreflang?
-
We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks!
-
Thanks for this helpful response, Dirk! Yep, you understood our question correctly. Looks like we may not be able to add an hreflang tag on our /traductor page then. If there's any way around this please let us know!
-
The answer by Dimitri is wrong! (Sorry Dimitri).
The hreflang's href doesn't pass any link equity (use this definition, not link juice, please :-)).
It is a rel="alternate" and doesn't have any connection with things like 301s.
-
Hreflang is reciprocal - so if page A indicates page B as equivalent - page B has to declare page A as equivalent.
If I understand your question well - you want to have 2 English pages with a hreflang pointing to the same Spanish page. This is not possible.
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk -- Thanks for your helpful response! One more question, can we have an hreflang tag from both our homepage (www.spanishdict.com) and another page (www.spanishdict.com/translation) to the Spanish version of the site (www.spanishdict.com/traductor)?
-
Ok, that's what I thought. I guess I just didn't explain properly in my first answer

-
In that case it will reinforce the domain (like any external link to any page on the domain).
It's just that a link to domain.com/es/page will not count as a link to domain.com/en/page even when they are "linked" via the hreflang tag. Idem where the domains are different. ex domain.es/page & domain.co.uk/page - a link to .es page will not count for the .co.uk page (and domain) even when they are connected via the hreflang.
Dirk
-
Hi. Well, they do not consolidate, that's for sure. However, I have a question then: so, if, let's say i have a to site.com/ and site.com/es/ for Spain and then somebody links to site.com/es/, wouldn't this increase DA of the whole domain, which is site.com?
-
Not sure if what Dmitrii is stating is correct.
If you check the comments here https://www.distilled.net/blog/distilled/distilledlive-london-a-few-thoughts-on-hreflang/ they state:
" hreflang anotations do not consolidate link equity." (source: Maile Ohye (Google's Developer Programs Tech Lead) at SES London) "Hreflang was not designed to consolidate link authority" (source John Mu - chat with David Sottimano)Also on Moz - Gianluca seems to be convinced of the same - https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/will-website-with-tag-hreflang-pass-link-juice-to-other-country-language-version-of-website -
Dirk
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do Canonical Tags Pass Link Juice?
I have an ecommerce website where some pages link to a product page with a different URL. EXAMPLE: 1: /category/product1.html (not indexed by Google) with canonical pointing to product1.html Other page link to the product like below. 2: product1.html (indexed by Google) Now the question is, does 1: pass any link juice to product1.html or not? Is it worth to change everything and link only to one URL? My site is running on Magento!
Technical SEO | | bill3690 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
Ok to internally link to pages with NOINDEX?
I manage a directory site with hundreds of thousands of indexed pages. I want to remove a significant number of these pages from the index using NOINDEX and have 2 questions about this: 1. Is NOINDEX the most effective way to remove large numbers of pages from Google's index? 2. The IA of our site means that we will have thousands of internal links pointing to these noindexed pages if we make this change. Is it a problem to link to pages with a noindex directive on them? Thanks in advance for all responses.
Technical SEO | | OMGPyrmont0 -
Dofollow and Nofollow links
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?
Technical SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Links from the same server has value or not
Hi Guys, Sometime ago one of the SEO experts said to me if I get links from the same IP address, Google doesn't count them as with much value. For an example, I am a web devleoper and I host all my clients websites on one server and link them back to me. Im wondering whether those links have any value when it comes to seo or should I consider getting different hosting providers? Regards Uds
Technical SEO | | Uds0 -
Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?
We are working on a website that has some high-quality industry articles available on their website. For each article, there is an abstract with a link to the PDF which is hosted on the domain. We have found in Analytics that a lot of sites link directly to the PDF and not the webpage that has the abstract of the article. Can we get any benefit from a direct PDF link? Or do we need to modify our strategy?
Technical SEO | | MattAaron0 -
Does Google pass link juice a page receives if the URL parameter specifies content and has the Crawl setting in Webmaster Tools set to NO?
The page in question receives a lot of quality traffic but is only relevant to a small percent of my users. I want to keep the link juice received from this page but I do not want it to appear in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | surveygizmo0 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0