Does Hreflang tag affect Google ads?

[Juli_Schez]

Hello everyone!

I was planning to add hreflang tag to my websites but could someone tell me if this would affect my PPC campaigns? So for example, if I'm adding hreflang tag of Germany to "de.example.com" but I have my PPC specialist targeting worldwide audience for this page, would it be confusing for Google? For SEO it's beneficial but I'm not sure if we'll have to change our PPC strategy as well. Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you very much!

[not2easy]

For SEO it's beneficial

Using the hreflang tag for SEO is not what they are useful for. It is intended to help robots decide which pages to show in results for particular languageswhen there are equivalent pages in other languages. It would not benefit pages that are being promoted to all visitors from all countries.

There is no purpose in using hreflang tags if there are not "duplicate" pages in other languages - which you would want to run separate PPC campaigns for success.

[Juli_Schez]

Thank you! In my case, my main domain and subdomains are all in english but they're targeted to local audience. So de.example.com is targeted to german people but the page is in english and it has almost the same information as my main domain example.com. Which is why, I was planning to add hreflang "DE-en" to avoid duplicate content as well as help robots decide which page to show. That's why, I was wondering whether it'll affect our PPC campaigns which are targetted towards international audience, I think not.

P.S.: Having a subdomain was something our upper management wanted and they're not ready to understand why we don't them.

[not2easy]

But if the page is in english, there is no reason to add the hreflang tag, just use a canonical tag if it is essentially the same content as another page. That hreflang tag might backfire when the robots don't find a German language equivalent but just the same content.

[Juli_Schez]

Here's what I read on MOZ: [moz.com...]

"Hreflang can also be used to show that you have content targeted toward variants of a single language. If that's the case, you can target your pages even more specifically by extending the hreflang attribute with annotations that indicate which region the content is localized for, e.g. Spain hreflang="es-es" versus Mexico hreflang="es-mx". This is particularly useful to geotarget users to control for variations in currency, shipping, seasonality, and culture."

[not2easy]

But you said

So de.example.com is targeted to german people but the page is in english

which is not at all targeting different languages, it is expecting people seeking content in German language to be pleased at landing on a page in another language. This is not a good user experience.

Hreflang can also be used to show that you have content targeted toward variants of a single language.

refers to variation in the same language as in their example using "es-es" and "es-mx" to denote variations of the Spanish language in different regions, not the "variation" between distinctly different languages such as German and English.

Nothing at MOZ suggests you should use hreflang tags to pretend a page is in a different language than it is actually using.

The AdsBot would not be pleased to find ads targeting German language speakers using landing pages that are in English but containing hreflang tags stating that the pages are in German language.

[phranque]

you should use "en-DE" to specify English language content intended for a visitor from Germany.

[Juli_Schez]

@not2easy - Hi, sorry, i think i didn't explain myself correctly. My idea is to put "en-de" for de.example.com, "en-es" for es.example.com and so on.. but im worried that the adsbot might get confused.

@phranque - Hi, yes, that's what Im planning to do but I'm worried that it'll affect our ad campaigns, do you think it will?

Thanks all in advance for your reply!

[phranque]

hreflang was introduced by Google Search [developers.google.com] - herefore i think hreflang is irrelevant to Google Ads.
this is my opinion, which probably won't change until i see an authoritative reference indicating otherwise.
the lack of such a reference is probably indicative, in and of itself.

[lammert]

The problem you have is not technical.

You have written a web page that is specific for an English-speaking audience in Germany. That is why you have a demographic-specific subdomain de.example.com and add hreflang tags to the header. Why would you want to waste money to have a PPC campaign for that page for an audience which isn't the same demograpic you designed the page for? Either your intended audience is local, or it is global. It can't be both for the same landing page.

Decide which audience you want. Then adjust both your SEO on PPC campaigns to the same audience.

As a side note, living in mainland Europe, English language campaigns and landing pages for a non-English speaking demographic will have only moderate results anyway. If you really want to reach a local group, give them web content in their native language.

[jediviper]

These examples don't really make sense, no matter if it's good or not for the Google ads.
"My idea is to put "en-de" for de.example.com, "en-es" for es.example.com "

No serious website will use English text for a German or Spanish subdomain.

[Juli_Schez]

Hi @jediviper, it's actually a city subdomain. So we offer courses in english only for international students. Our website's content, therefore, is in english. We are based in Frankfurt, Rome and Madrid, so we have our main domain and three other subdomains: frankfurt.example.com, rome.example.com and madrid.example.com. So, I'm planning to add hreflang tags on them so they only show up for Germay, Italy and Spain based users, respectively, by adding en-DE, en-IT and en-ES. I don't see any other way of maintaining these subdomains as management isn't willing to get rid of them and I think instead of canonicalizing them (which has also been recommended to me) it's best to make them region-specific although the language is still english.

[lammert]

Answer yourself three questions:

• How much do the local PPC campaigns cost and how much revenue do they generate
  
• How much do the global PPC campaigns cost an how much revenue do they generate
  
• How much do your SEO efforts cost and how much revenue do they generate

Based on the answers to these questions, make a decision if you want to optimize for SEO or PPC.