Add hreflang tags to WordPress.org and local homepages

[yoavf]

​hreflang tags help search engines understand the relationships between various sites with the same localized content.
We should add those to (xx.)wordpress.org and (xx.)forums.wordpress.org

[dd32]

My only question is.. how many of the 135 locales we have should be listed.

The obvious answer is 'all of them!', or maybe just the 89 who have made a release, or perhaps the 69 who have a 4.x release, or maybe even just the 54 that have a 4.2 release..

[samuelsidler]

What do other major sites do?

[dd32]

The only location that I'm aware that uses them is WordPress.com - They have a set of 11 languages they officially support, so it only covers those.

Another angle we could use is if their usage is >= a certain percent of total sites - 1% (15), 2% (9).. but that penalises languages which are used in a smaller geographical area.

[samuelsidler]

Looks like mozilla.org includes all 76 languages that the site supports. Facebook.com includes 29 languages in hreflang.

I tend to think if we do support it on WordPress.org, we should support it for all locales with a recent WordPress version. Right now, the polyglots team defines that as latest or latest-1. Anything older is considered "inactive."

[dd32]

we should support it for all locales with a recent WordPress version. Right now, the polyglots team defines that as latest or latest-1. Anything older is considered "inactive."

That's my inclination too, which would be 60-70 locales currently, and potentially more in the future.

[joostdevalk]

I agree with @samuelsidler, we should do it for all languages that have a recent version. As we roll out translated plugin directories, it will actually incentivize people to work harder on plugin translations as more people will end up on a translated repo :)

[Otto42]

Proposal:

• For any plugin/theme/other pages which have actual translated versions, we add the link rel=alternate hreflang tags to those translated pages.

• For any plugin/theme/other pages which have yet to be translated, we add rel=canonical pointing back to the main wordpress.org page.

As translations fill out, this will eliminate the canonicals and add in the hreflangs.

Objections? @joostdevalk ?

Reasoning:

​https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#3
​https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

[ocean90]

For any plugin/theme/other pages which have actual translated versions, we add the link rel=alternate hreflang tags to those translated pages.

For the record: This will be different from the list in the sidebar because a plugin can have language pack but the readme is still at 0%.

[Otto42]

Replying to ocean90:

For the record: This will be different from the list in the sidebar because a plugin can have language pack but the readme is still at 0%.

True, however I would say that we should do it if either the readme or the plugin is translated.

For the case where the readme is translated but the plugin is not, then there's obviously no real problem.

For the case where the plugin is translated but the readme is not, then we run into the same duplicate content penalty, but much less so than now, and it also lets those users at least see the localized plugin page in search results. Gives those users a chance to find out that the page is not translated yet and perhaps go translate it.

[joostdevalk]

No objections from my side, I'd say: do it.

[ocean90]

Related: #1631

[samuelsidler]

[dotorg-11581] fixed this for the plugin directory (from @ocean90), but we still need this on the WordPress.org homepage and in the theme directory.

[ocean90]

In 2909:

Theme Directory: Add hreflang link attributes.

Same code is already used for 2 months in the plugin directory.

See #990.

[joostdevalk]

If we're going to tackle this we need to clean up the number of hreflang functions, I think I've seen 3 different ones, theme directory, plugin directory and support now, and there are probably more, replicating the same code. Also, we should really only use languages that have an ISO-639-1 code, as those are the only ones Google supports for now.

[dd32]

Also, we should really only use languages that have an ISO-639-1 code, as those are the only ones Google supports for now.

I'm going to disagree there, we should support it for any language we support, regardless of if Google respects it or not.

[joostdevalk]

Well... It's a Google spec. If Google doesn't support it, and has no plans to, which it seems from my recent email conversation, because they don't have results in those languages either, then it's no use to output that code. Of course you're technically right as ​the RFC that created hreflang only mentions ISO 639, not ISO 639-1 specifically.

[obenland]

@joostdevalk Has this been fixed at WCUS contributor day?

[joostdevalk]

Yes!