Do i need hreflang or rel for translations in different domains?

Question

I have a page in russian and I've decided to translate it using a completely different domain, so that it can be easier to remember. However, I'm using a page builder (elementor) which makes it really annoying and tricky to go page by page linking them with hreflang or rel.

What are the pros of doing it? Will i get better ranking (will google use my russian page value to give some push to the new domain?)

If i don't do it, will i get penalized for duplicate content? (Consider I manually translate rather than using Google Translate).

Thanks.

Answer 1

What are the pros of doing it? Will i get better ranking (will google use my russian page value to give some push to the new domain?)

By using hreflang you are helping Google determine the target localization of your content:

How does Google determine a target locale?

Google relies on a number of signals to determine the best target audience for a page: ...

hreflang statements, whether in tags, headers, or sitemaps.

If i don't do it, will i get penalized for duplicate content?

Quite possible:

Localized versions of a page are only considered duplicates if the main content of the page remains untranslated.

Read more Avoid creating duplicate content:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content in the same language or are appreciably similar.