Google’s Search Advocate, John Mueller, confirmed that hreflang link tags do not have to be organized hierarchically.
A person asked on Twitter if hreflang link tags have to be hierarchical, and Mueller said it doesn’t matter.
The hreflang, also referred to as rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”, is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage. A website owner can use the hreflang tag to inform search engines like Google and Yandex that his website pages have multiple versions in different languages.
Hreflang tags help international websites to:
- Serve the correct version of the website to the right visitors based on their region and preferred language.
- Achieve organic traffic in different countries.
- Deliver a good user experience (UX).
- Build a strong international search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
For more information about the hreflang tags, here is the official Google documentation.