URL rules for pages with different languages?

[Boyd_Ramona]

Hi guys,

I work on a website that is in English and in Spanish. The same categories have English and Spanish variations / pages.

Each version of the URL is different, so I assumed they would be different pages, but according to one of our developers it's the following:

<link rel="canonical" href= "https://example.com/en/category1english" >

<link rel="alternate" href= "https://example.com/en/category1english" hreflang="en-us">

<link rel="alternate" href="example.com/es/categoria1espaņol" hreflang="es-es">

"As a variation. Not as separate."

I wonder, from an SEO perspective, could having this one variation affect the other page? Would it be better to have two URLs perhaps? Or is this setup okay? Historically it hasn't harmed the ranking of pages, but with new algorithm updates, some pages have taken a hit, all other things held equal...

I know no one has the answer 100%, but any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[edited by: not2easy at 3:41 am (utc) on Mar 3, 2024]
[edit reason] Please use example.com for examples [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hi Boyd_Ramona and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Google explains how to use the alternate and hreflang tags here: [developers.google.com...]

It helps to show localized language results, but you can use sitemaps for Google to show the alternate language pages without markup on each page. It is more important to have accurate language differences and avoid auto-translated results that can confuse context.

I believe having three versions can cause duplicate content issues.
if these two pages have the same content:

<link rel="canonical" href= "https://example.com/en/category1english" >
<link rel="alternate" href= "https://example.com/en/category1english" hreflang="en-us"> 

[Boyd_Ramona]

Thank you very much for your very useful sharing