(Entry was posted by Ian Macleod on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 11/17/2014).

I’m using Semrush and Webmaster tools to fine tune our sites.

Hi All, Another Dumb SEO Question for the community.

I’m using Semrush and Webmaster tools to fine tune our sites. SEMrush is telling me that we have 403 pages that are missing correct language declaration.

If you don’t declare the language of a webpage’s content, the web text might not be recognized by search engines. Also, it may not appear in search results or be displayed incorrectly, which can make your website less accessible to people with disabilities.

I’m a little confused between a simple meta language tag and the hreflang language tag which is used when you have the same or similar pages in a different language.
Our sites are only in English and directed to an Australian market. Do I still need to specify that we are Australian or is that not obvious from the .com.au domain? If so, is it necessary to express this as Australian English, because our Engish is a little different to US English and British English?

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Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Ian Macleod: Hi All, Another Dumb SEO Question for the community.

I’m using Semrush and Webmaster tools to fine tune our sites. SEMrush is telling me that we have 403 pages that are missing correct language declaration.

If you don’t declare the language of a webpage’s content, the web text might not be recognized by search engines. Also, it may not appear in search results or be displayed incorrectly, which can make your website less accessible to people with disabilities.

I’m a little confused between a simple meta language tag and the hreflang language tag which is used when you have the same or similar pages in a different language. ;
Our sites are only in English and directed to an Australian market. Do I still need to specify that we are Australian or is that not obvious from the .com.au domain? If so, is it necessary to express this as Australian English, because our Engish is a little different to US English and British English
promoz seo: I would suggest you to use language tag ( ;lang="en-AU" & ;content="en-au") on each pages of the site. ;hreflang can be used in case of gTLD domains. .com.au is a ccTLD domain so ;hreflang is not required here.
Greg Baka: You should declare the language in the first line of code, like this:
<html lang="en-au">
Mach Page Speed: +Ian Macleod ;you could also declare it in your .htaccess if you have one so you would not need to declare it on every page.

Add the following to the top of your .htaccess

DefaultLanguage en-AU
Ian Macleod: Thank you all +promoz seo +Greg Baka and +Mach Page Speed. For a small business like ours +Dumb SEO Questions is such a great resource I really appreciate the help we get here. All the best.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 11/17/2014).

I’m using Semrush and Webmaster tools to fine tune our sites.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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