Question about language tags

[wonderpunter]

I have searched but all the info I get is related to sites using subdomains or subfolders, Is there any advantage to adding a language tag for say the UK, Australia, Canada on my main site? even though there is not a second duplicate article created via subdomain or similar? will it benefit extra indexing within the local serps?

[DanHorvat]

What do you mean by language tag?

You intend to have copies of the same article with different language tags even though the language is the same, and you expect to rank better in that country?

[-Shay-]

I would not add multiple language tags to the same article. Pick the one tag that best reflects the variation in which your work is written.

[wonderpunter]

Work is written in UK, USA and Australian English.. So I was wondering if there were any benefits to tagging en-au etc, or should I stick with en-us?

[wonderpunter]

or should I just use EN? I have noticed a lot of the large global sites use just the EN tag or multiple country tags but do not actually have any extra content for the specific variations

[-Shay-]

Work is written in UK, USA and Australian English.. So I was wondering if there were any benefits to tagging en-au etc, or should I stick with en-us?

There is a difference (albeit slight) between the different variations of English. Take a page of your content and run it through Microsoft Word (spelling and grammar check) on whatever it is set. Then, highlight all the text and select a different variation of English and you will surely notice some of the spellings are different as are some of the "rules".

With that in mind, going with a straight EN is probably better than multiple tags. I say probably because I do not know (for certain) whether plain "EN" is accepted/treated as a full language tag or not.

[maxpower]

EN is accepted as a full language tag IMHO, I don´t have any problems with it in GWT..

[Rick Perry]

Here is simple, but powerful testing tool for hreflangs - http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/