Does link equity flow across hreflang language versions?

[viktor_n]

We have a site in 6 languages with hreflang tags. Should I be building internal links between language versions, or keep each language's link graph completely separate?

[Kate M.]

Hreflang tells Google which language version to show users, but it doesn't affect PageRank flow between versions. PageRank flows via regular followed links regardless of language.

Best practice: keep your internal link graphs mostly separate per language. Cross-language links are fine for language switchers (typically nofollow or rel=alternate), but your main content links should point to pages in the same language. Analyse each language subdirectory separately in LinkJuice for a clean picture.

[Oliver]

Totally agree with the above. I'd also look at the outgoing links from your strongest pages. If your homepage links to 200+ things it loses focus. Cutting that list to 30-40 links concentrating on commercial pages made a noticeable difference for us.

[Dev]

Just adding a data point: we did this analysis for an 80,000-page e-commerce site and the run time was under 2 minutes in Chrome. No issues at all. The orphan detection alone saved us probably 15 hours of manual audit work.