Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. How does link juice flow through hreflang?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How does link juice flow through hreflang?

    Technical SEO
    4
    9
    3371
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • CuriosityMedia
      CuriosityMedia last edited by

      We want to use the hreflang tag on our site (direct users searching for the Spanish version of spanishdict.com to spanishdict.com/traductor). Before doing so, we were wondering how link juice flows through hreflang? Any insight or resources on this would be very helpful. Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • CuriosityMedia
        CuriosityMedia @DirkC last edited by

        Thanks for this helpful response, Dirk! Yep, you understood our question correctly. Looks like we may not be able to add an hreflang tag on our /traductor page then.  If there's any way around this please let us know!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • gfiorelli1
          gfiorelli1 last edited by

          The answer by Dimitri is wrong! (Sorry Dimitri).

          The hreflang's href doesn't pass any link equity (use this definition, not link juice, please :-)).

          It is a rel="alternate" and doesn't have any connection with things like 301s.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • DirkC
            DirkC @CuriosityMedia last edited by

            Hreflang is reciprocal - so if page A indicates page B as equivalent - page B has to declare page A as equivalent.

            If I understand your question well - you want to have 2 English pages with a hreflang pointing to the same Spanish page. This is not possible.

            Dirk

            CuriosityMedia 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • CuriosityMedia
              CuriosityMedia @DirkC last edited by

              Hi Dirk --  Thanks for your helpful response! One more question, can we have an hreflang tag from both our homepage (www.spanishdict.com) and another page (www.spanishdict.com/translation) to the Spanish version of the site (www.spanishdict.com/traductor)?

              DirkC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • DmitriiK
                DmitriiK @DirkC last edited by

                Ok, that's what I thought. I guess I just didn't explain properly in my first answer 🙂

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DirkC
                  DirkC @DmitriiK last edited by

                  In that case it will reinforce the domain (like any external link to any page on the domain).

                  It's just that a link to domain.com/es/page will not count as a link to domain.com/en/page even when they are "linked" via the hreflang tag. Idem where the domains are different. ex domain.es/page & domain.co.uk/page - a link to .es page will not count for the .co.uk page (and domain) even when they are connected via the hreflang.

                  Dirk

                  DmitriiK CuriosityMedia 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • DmitriiK
                    DmitriiK @DirkC last edited by

                    Hi. Well, they do not consolidate, that's for sure. However, I have a question then: so, if, let's say i have a to site.com/ and site.com/es/ for Spain and then somebody links to site.com/es/, wouldn't this increase DA of the whole domain, which is site.com?

                    DirkC 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • DirkC
                      DirkC last edited by

                      Not sure if what Dmitrii is stating is correct.
                      If you check the comments here https://www.distilled.net/blog/distilled/distilledlive-london-a-few-thoughts-on-hreflang/ they state:
                      " hreflang anotations do not consolidate link equity." (source: Maile Ohye (Google's Developer Programs Tech Lead) at SES London) "Hreflang was not designed to consolidate link authority" (source John Mu - chat with David Sottimano)

                      Also on Moz - Gianluca seems to be convinced of the same - https://cloudz.click/community/q/will-website-with-tag-hreflang-pass-link-juice-to-other-country-language-version-of-website -

                      Dirk

                      DmitriiK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • sforoughi

                        disavow link more than 100,000 lines

                        disavow spam

                        I recieved a huge amount of spamy link (most of them has spam score 100) Currently my disavow link is arround 85.000 lines but at least i have 100.000 more domain which i should add them. All of them are domains and i don't have any backlink in my file. My Problem is that google dosen't accept disavow link which are more than 2MB and showes this message : File too big: Maximum file size is 100,000 lines and 2MB What should i do now?

                        Technical SEO | | sforoughi
                        0
                      • AL123al

                        Page Rank Flow

                        I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks

                        Technical SEO | | AL123al
                        0
                      • NickG-123

                        Duplicate titles from hreflang variations

                        Hi, I am working on a large global site which has around 9 different language variations. We have setup the hreflang tags and referenced the corresponding content as follows: (We have not implemented a version X-default reference, as we felt it was not necessary) Using DeepCrawl and Search Console, we can see that these language variations are causing duplicate title issues. Many of them. My assumption was that the hreflang would have alleviated this issue and informed Google what is going on, however i wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing before. It would be good to understand what the best practice approach is to deal with the problem. Is it even an issue at all, or just the tools being over-sensitive? Thank you in advance.

                        Technical SEO | | NickG-123
                        0
                      • shawnbeaird

                        301 Redirect for multiple links

                        I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old 
                        domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
                        domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
                        domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New 
                        domain.com/urban 
                        domain.com/urban/tempe 
                        domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale

                        Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
                        0
                      • Liggins

                        Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to

                        Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!

                        Technical SEO | | Liggins
                        0
                      • AB_Newbie

                        How to find all crawlable links on a particular page?

                        Hi! This might sound like a newbie question, but I'm trying to find all crawlable links (that google bot sees), on a particular page of my website. I'm trying to use screaming frog, but that gives me all the links on that particular page, AND all subsequent pages in the given sub-directory. What I want is ONLY the crawlable links pointing away from a particular page. What is the best way to go about this? Thanks in advance.

                        Technical SEO | | AB_Newbie
                        0
                      • inlinear

                        Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

                        Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
                        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
                        RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
                        2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
                        Holger

                        Technical SEO | | inlinear
                        0
                      • tvkiley

                        Does Yelp pass link juice?

                        This is probably a profoundly obvious question, but I can't seem to find an explicit answer on the internet, so I'll ask it here: Yelp's links out to local business websites are not nofollow'd, but they go through a javascript-based redirect. My understanding is that javascript redirected links do not pass link juice, so a link from a yelp profile will not directly impact my page authority; however, it looks like yelp does use nofollow judiciously for internal links, so I don't understand why they would allow follow for these "useless" outbound links. Do yelp's javascript-redirected links pass link juice?

                        Technical SEO | | tvkiley
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.