Language Optimization SEO – Definitive SEO Language Guide

Language Optimization SEO – Definitive SEO Language Guide

Language Optimization SEO is to bring into the knowledge of which syntax we should use in our website in order to look more SEO-friendly in the eyes of Google.

Language Optimization SEO

What is the “content-language” Meta Tag?

The “content-language” tag is a meta tag in the <head> of an HTML document that states the language and country of that a page’s content is most relevant for.

The tag looks like this:

<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=””>

The content attribute is where you will define the language and country. So for American English, it would look like this:

<meta http-equiv=”content-language” content=”en-us”>

Source Code Analysis for Language Optimization SEO:

For this website, we have following code available on the site. Screenshot below for your reference:

Content-Language, an entity-header, is generally used to describe the languages intended for the audience. So that it allows a user to differentiate according to the users’ own preferred language. The entity headers are used in both, HTTP requests and responses.

Accept-Language, a request HTTP header, advertises which languages the client is able to understand, and which locale variant is preferred. There can be multiple languages, each with an optional weight or ‘quality’ value. For example:

Accept-Language: da, en-GB;q=0.8, en;q=0.7

(The default weight is 1, so this is equivalent to da;q=1, en-GB;q=0.8, en;q=0.7).

You’re going to have to parse the values and weights to see if an appropriate translation is available. And provide the user the translation in the highest preferred language weight.

Generally to force a certain language for your site. This is because some users may want to see your site in a certain language. That is without changing their language acceptance preferences.

Content-Language Header

The Content-Language header is associated with a particular page by settings on the server or by server-side scripting. For example, you will typically find a Content-language header in the HTTP metadata when a server holds more than one version of a resource, each in a different language. Assume, the server uses the information it has about you to automatically select a particular language version (‘content negotiation’). Then, the language version selected identified in the HTTP header.

The HTTP Content-Language header can provide useful language data related to the page or resource you are retrieving, but the HTTP specification indicates clearly that the intent of this information is to provide metadata about the intended audience of the document, rather than to indicate the actual language of the text itself. The metadata is for serving the right language version, workflow management, classification, searching, etc.