Story Based Question
You’re managing a global website for a luxury hotel chain, with versions in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, and Japanese. Each language version has its own unique set of images, showcasing different rooms, services, and attractions tailored to specific markets. You want to ensure that the right images are shown to users based on their language and region, and you want to help search engines understand which images belong to which language version. How do you use the hreflang attribute with images to optimize your international SEO efforts?
Exact Answer
To use hreflang with images for international SEO, you should ensure that each language version of your site has localized image URLs and image alt text. You can also use the hreflang attribute in the HTML to indicate the language and regional targeting of each page and image. This allows search engines to understand which images correspond to which language version of your site. Additionally, you should submit separate image sitemaps for each language version to help search engines index the images accurately.
Explanation
Using hreflang effectively for images requires a few key strategies to make sure search engines can properly associate images with the correct language and regional versions of your site. The hreflang attribute is typically used to indicate which language and region a specific page targets, but it can also be extended to images by ensuring that each page and its associated images are properly localized.
First, ensure that the image URLs and alt text are localized. For example, if you have an image showcasing a hotel suite in your English version, the image URL might be luxury-suite.jpg and the alt text might say “Luxury suite with ocean view.” For the Spanish version, the image URL could be suite-de-lujo-con-vista-al-mar.jpg and the alt text could say “Suite de lujo con vista al mar.” This ensures that search engines understand the image’s relevance to the language version of the site.
Next, the hreflang attribute in the HTML of your page helps search engines understand which page is meant for which region and language. For example, on the English version of your hotel website, the hreflang attribute would look something like this in the <head> section:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”https://www.example.com/en/”>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”https://www.example.com/es/”>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ja-jp” href=”https://www.example.com/ja/”>
By using the hreflang attribute, search engines can accurately match the right image content with the corresponding language version, and show the relevant images to users in those regions.
Finally, submitting separate image sitemaps for each language version of the site ensures that search engines know exactly which images belong to which version of the page. This allows your images to be indexed and displayed correctly in search results based on the user’s language and region.
Example
Suppose you have a hotel website with images of different suites. In the English version of the site, you have an image of the “Oceanview Suite” with the URL oceanview-suite.jpg and alt text “Oceanview suite with king-sized bed and balcony.” In the Spanish version, the same suite is represented by the image suite-con-vista-al-mar.jpg with alt text “Suite con vista al mar con cama king-size y balcón.”
You ensure that the English page has the following hreflang tags in the HTML:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”https://www.example.com/en/oceanview-suite/”>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”https://www.example.com/es/suite-con-vista-al-mar/”>
This tells search engines that the English page should show the image oceanview-suite.jpg, and the Spanish version should show suite-con-vista-al-mar.jpg.
Additionally, you create a sitemap for the English site with the image URLs:
<url>
<loc>https://www.example.com/en/oceanview-suite/</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://www.example.com/images/oceanview-suite.jpg</image:loc>
<image:caption>Oceanview suite with king-sized bed and balcony</image:caption>
</image:image>
</url>
You repeat this process for the Spanish version with its corresponding images, ensuring that search engines index and serve the correct images to users based on their language and region.