Every website or Blog has specific language that used for describing content. And this is depending on geo-location. Suppose if you are running an English Blog then generally your Blog language would be English. Similarly if you would like to run a Blog with your local language like Hindi or Bengali then you website language would be according to local language. And every website when load first time then it takes little time to detect language. But if you declare about your website language then a site can perform smoothly. However not only language but also we should declare the country of origin of our website or Blog.
Search engine plays an important role in language declaration because search robot attempt to understand about your Blog or website language and according to language and country of origin they serve website URL according to search query.
Why should we declare language?
There are various reasons that we should declare language in our Blog or website. Suppose your have created a local website or a Blog for country specific people then you must target specific group of people who speak your language.
In addition, for better search engine function based on search algorithms and data we must declare language on Blog.
This is very easy to declare language on your website or Blog. And it has great significance in search engine optimization. When you declare site language then Search engine algorithms instantly detect language.
We can declare site language by using HTML META tag and XML attribute. And both systems are widely acceptable by all major search engines. However there are different search engine understand site language, HTML or XML attributions differently. Now I will show you how to tell search engine about your website or Blog language.
How to Tell Bing search engine your country and language?
Bing is one of the popular search engines among majors search engines over the net. And Bing requires a META tag for understanding the site language and country. You can have a look below examples
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en">
This Meta tag understandable by Bing search engine. In the above META tag I have declared the language as en this is an ISO short letter language code. Now take a look on the below Meta tag.
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en, fr">
In this meta tag I have declared content language with country. And it will give extra information about your website. Here en means website language English and fr means France is your country. So search engine will understand that you are the owner of English Blog whose origin is France.
We can simply add the above Meta tag after/below
<html lang="en-us">
<title lang="en-us">
ISO 639-2 Language Codes
I know you have find language declaration procedure pretty easy. But you may not from USA, France or Germany so you need other countries ISO letter language codes. Don�t worry I just provided below for you. ISO 639-2 is an abbreviation of all countries language code. And all language has unique short codes to define the language of website. Here is the ISO 639-2 letter language code for Blog or Website.
| ISO Code | Language |
|---|---|
| AA | "Afar" |
| AB | "Abkhazian" |
| AF | "Afrikaans" |
| AM | "Amharic" |
| AR | "Arabic" |
| AS | "Assamese" |
| AY | "Aymara" |
| AZ | "Azerbaijani" |
| BA | "Bashkir" |
| BE | "Byelorussian" |
| BG | "Bulgarian" |
| BH | "Bihari" |
| BI | "Bislama" |
| BN | "Bengali" "Bangla" |
| BO | "Tibetan" |
| BR | "Breton" |
| CA | "Catalan" |
| CO | "Corsican" |
| CS | "Czech" |
| CY | "Welsh" |
| DA | "Danish" |
| DE | "German" |
| DZ | "Bhutani" |
| EL | "Greek" |
| EN | "English" "American" |
| EO | "Esperanto" |
| ES | "Spanish" |
| ET | "Estonian" |
| EU | "Basque" |
| FA | "Persian" |
| FI | "Finnish" |
| FJ | "Fiji" |
| FO | "Faeroese" |
| FR | "French" |
| FY | "Frisian" |
| GA | "Irish" |
| GD | "Gaelic" "Scots Gaelic" |
| GL | "Galician" |
| GN | "Guarani" |
| GU | "Gujarati" |
| HA | "Hausa" |
| HI | "Hindi" |
| HR | "Croatian" |
| HU | "Hungarian" |
| HY | "Armenian" |
| IA | "Interlingua" |
| IE | "Interlingue" |
| IK | "Inupiak" |
| IN | "Indonesian" |
| IS | "Icelandic" |
| IT | "Italian" |
| IW | "Hebrew" |
| JA | "Japanese" |
| JI | "Yiddish" |
| JW | "Javanese" |
| KA | "Georgian" |
| KK | "Kazakh" |
| KL | "Greenlandic" |
| KM | "Cambodian" |
| KN | "Kannada" |
| KO | "Korean" |
| KS | "Kashmiri" |
| KU | "Kurdish" |
| KY | "Kirghiz" |
| LA | "Latin" |
| LN | "Lingala" |
| LO | "Laothian" |
| LT | "Lithuanian" |
| LV | "Latvian" "Lettish" |
| MG | "Malagasy" |
| MI | "Maori" |
| MK | "Macedonian" |
| ML | "Malayalam" |
| MN | "Mongolian" |
| MO | "Moldavian" |
| MR | "Marathi" |
| MS | "Malay" |
| MT | "Maltese" |
| MY | "Burmese" |
| NA | "Nauru" |
| NE | "Nepali" |
| NL | "Dutch" |
| NO | "Norwegian" |
| OC | "Occitan" |
| OM | "Oromo" "Afan" |
| OR | "Oriya" |
| PA | "Punjabi" |
| PL | "Polish" |
| PS | "Pashto" "Pushto |
| PT | "Portuguese" |
| QU | "Quechua" |
| RM | "Rhaeto-Romance" |
| RN | "Kirundi" |
| RO | "Romanian" |
| RU | "Russian" |
| RW | "Kinyarwanda" |
| SA | "Sanskrit" |
| SD | "Sindhi" |
| SG | "Sangro" |
| SH | "Serbo-Croatian" |
| SI | "Singhalese" |
| SK | "Slovak" |
| SL | "Slovenian" |
| SM | "Samoan" |
| SN | "Shona" |
| SO | "Somali" |
| SQ | "Albanian" |
| SR | "Serbian" |
| SS | "Siswati" |
| ST | "Sesotho" |
| SU | "Sudanese" |
| SV | "Swedish" |
| SW | "Swahili" |
| TA | "Tamil" |
| TE | "Tegulu" |
| TG | "Tajik" |
| TH | "Thai" |
| TI | "Tigrinya" |
| TK | "Turkmen" |
| TL | "Tagalog" |
| TN | "Setswana" |
| TO | "Tonga" |
| TR | "Turkish" |
| TS | "Tsonga" |
| TT | "Tatar" |
| TW | "Twi" |
| UK | "Ukrainian" |
| UR | "Urdu" |
| UZ | "Uzbek" |
| VI | "Vietnamese" |
| VO | "Volapuk" |
| WO | "Wolof" |
| XH | "Xhosa" |
| YO | "Yoruba" |
| ZH | "Chinese" |
| ZU | "Zulu" |
So use any language letter code from above according to your need. I hope you have learned to tell Bing search engine about your website language. Now what about other search engine?
How to tell Google about your Website and language?
We all know Google search engine is the most popular search engine over the net. And to give language information to Google search engine we have to add a simple attribute. Though this is number one search engine and there are huge users are using Google�s popular Blogger product for Blogging purpose but comparatively with other Blogging platform Blogger users are not huge. So I think we should declare language for Google search engine for better search engine optimization.
In Google Blogger we can use lang attribute to declare language. Alternatively xml:lang attribution work fine to define your Blog language. I will show you how to use this attribution.
Step 1 Log in to your Blogger Account and Go to your Blogger Dashboard
Step 2 Click on -> Template -> Edit HTML->
Step 3 Now find <html by pressing Ctrl+F (Windows) or CMD+F (Mac)
Step 4 And replace <html bye below code.
<html lang="en"
Customization
Please alter en with your website language code. You will get the 2 letter ISO language code from above table.
Step 5 Finally hit the Save template button.
Alternative method to Declare Language
There is alternative method available for declaring language on Blogger site. And this method is also best alternative of above method. Please follow the below steps for language declaration on Google Blogger.
Step 1 Log in to your Blogger Account and Go to your Blogger Dashboard
Step 2 Click on -> Template -> Edit HTML->
Step 3 Now locate <html
Step 4 And replace <html by below code.
lang='en-US' xml:lang='en-US'
Customization
- Please alter en-US with your website language code. You will get the 2 letter ISO 639 language code from above table.
Step 5 And finally click Save template button.
Congratulation you have successfully declared the language on your Blog or website. I hope after doing this simple tweak you will able to optimize your Blog or website for search engine.
In conclusion, whatever your Website platforms try to add language Meta tag or lang attribution above <head> section and I am damn sure it will work like charm. Happy Blogging.
Congratulation you have successfully declared the language on your Blog or website. I hope after doing this simple tweak you will able to optimize your Blog or website for search engine.
In conclusion, whatever your Website platforms try to add language Meta tag or lang attribution above <head> section and I am damn sure it will work like charm. Happy Blogging.