HREFLang for Regional Sites

Regional sites are the budget constrained approach to targeting multiple countries in a region using a single language site.  The most common of these regions are APAC for Asia Pacific countries, LatAM for South and Central American countries region or MENA covering Arabic speaking Middle East countries and North Africa.

Clarification: The hreflang can be used on a regional site a couple of ways. The first is by setting the regional site to a common language.  This is most commonly done with an Arabic language site.  In the example below, they set the regional site as the preferred for Arabic language markets.

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ar” href=”https://www.mysite.com/meana-ar/index.html”/>

Another way companies are using the hreflang element is to tag the same page for multiple countries. Sites will often do this when they already have a designated language site, multiple local sites in the same language and want this version to appear in specific markets rather than the x-default or language version.   In this approach, the element would be listed for each of the language markets you are targeting.

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-ar” href=”https://www.mysite.com/latam-es/index.html”/>

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-pe” href=”https://www.mysite.com/latam-es/index.html”/>

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-cl” href=”https://www.mysite.com/latam-es/index.html”/>