Localizing URLs Path - Hreflang

[Kilgray]

Hello,

This is a simple question regarding how URLs should be managed for proper results with the hreflang tags.

Right now, we have a website in English and German. The hreflang tag is working properly. This is how we currently have it:

• https://www.memoq.com/
• https://de.memoq.com/

But we will soon change the way we localize our web, moving out of the sub-domain structure. There is this possibility of localizing the URLs path, but I was wondering if the hreflang tag would work in such case.

The new structure would look something like:

• https://www.memoq.com/why-memoq
• https://www.memoq.com/de/warum-memoQ

So my question is: If we localize the keyword in the path of the URL, will the tag still work? Or do they need to be in the same language than the English version.

Thanks!

[NickJasuja]

Hreflang markup specifies which pages belong in a cluster. In the section of your HTML, you use tags to specify which URLs belong in the same cluster. The same set of tags should be on each page in the cluster. If your pages are passing the Hreflang validation then you already have this markup on your page.

[NickJasuja]

Yes, hreflang will work in the new structure that you included.

The point of Hreflang is to indicate that two (or more) URLs are part of the same cluster i.e., they have the same content but in different language. There is no requirement around what the URLs should be. They don't need to match or be similar in any way. They can be one the  same subdomain or different, same root domain or different, same folder or different...doesn't really matter.