Hreflang tag must be a quite unfamiliar phrase to many people in comparison to other SEO tips such as keyword density or mobile-first indexing. Have you ever wondered how to create a target for your website? So that the language used in your web matches searchers speaking that language? If you write in German an English creates a query, even being on the top page makes little sense.
Being unaware of this gradually undermines your attempt to rank high on SERPs. But don’t worry. You have come to the right place. In this article, we will give you the most detailed description of hreflang tag: What is it? Why is it important? How to implement it? What are the best generating tools?
Table of Contents
Hreflang tag was introduced by Google in 2011. Before that, Google depended on much less definitive indications to identify the relevance of a URL to a query. Some of them are subdomain, URL structure, physical addresses, telephone numbers or server location.
However, there were many internationalization problems existing. Probably implemented hreflang tag can help.
Hreflang tag is implemented as a link in the HTML <head>, XML sitemaps, or HTTP header. This implies is an explicit signal for Google to know the location of a page and the language it is targeting. Even when your page does not have a specific target on a country or a language, hreflang tag can give out information on default country and language.
Hreflang tag is necessary when you have more than one version of your main page.
When your content approaches the local audience, hreflang tag is especially useful. If you write in language “a”, search engines will suggest your content other than in “b” language. Therefore, implementation of hreflang tag helps decrease bounce rate, boost dwell time and most related to SEO, increase conversion rates.
Also, in case you have a different language version for people from different regions, you should inform Google through hreflang tag. SERPs don’t permit these duplicate or nearly duplicate content. Site owners can even get an unexpecting duplicate content penalty.
Furthermore, thanks to hreflang tag, SERPs like Google can serve the correct version to their users. Each version also stands a higher chance to rank better. For example, if you have 2 versions for Canada and the UK, Google ranks site on Canada for google.ca and ranks the other on google.uk. Depending on the region, Google suggests the more appropriate version to users by ranking it better than other versions available.
To see how a page uses hreflang tag, you can follow these steps:
Here are references – popular websites using hreflang tags:
Hreflang attribute is simple and has a clear syntax:
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-y” href=”https://site.com/page/” />
To explain the markup, we divide the code into different parts:
In fact, you should contain language abbreviation only or both elements in your tag. Why ? Regardless of the former case, in many cases, you need to have both “x” and “y”.
You can add hreflang tags through HTML <head>,XML sitemaps and HTTP headers. The first place is the most popular place to insert hreflang tags. However, the best one for you depends on your circumstances. We suggest that you discuss this with the development team first. They will know if any of these ways is not possible. In case you don’t employ one, don’t worry. We have sum up a comparison for you. It’s surely a good reference.
If you have an extensive branch with many countries and languages to work with, you will need a lot of hreflang tags. Normally, the number should be minimal so as not to increase the page size. If page load is a big problem for you, implementing by HTML <head> seems like not the best choice.
However, regardless of this, hreflang tags in <head> section are the easiest to verify. The source code tells you everything. Also, you can implement many tools if you choose this way.
In comparison with HTML <head>, it is more difficult to implement and verify in this way. It will be a distressing process. If linked pages are from different sitemaps, you have to load both sitemaps and find a suitable URL to link.
However, implementation on XML Sitemaps doesn’t add to your page load.
All tags in the HTTP headers are significantly more likely to be overlooked by SEO’s. When reviewing a page, many SEO’s will look at the source code but not the HTTP headers. As such, I don’t recommend implementing hreflang in the HTTP headers unless this is the only viable implementation method.
All tags in the HTTP headers stand a higher chance to be forgotten. SEO’s may probably check the source code but HTTP headers. Therefore, implementing hreflang tag in HTTP Headers are not very ideal unless there are no other options.
We have informed you a very detailed description of hreflang tag and how to make it beneficial on your own. It seems like only big businesses can apply this. However, actually, after reading, you can consider having some more websites to better serve different groups of customers.
We hope that this article is useful to you. If you want to know more SEO tips and most updated extensions available on eCommerce market, feel free to check our home page Landofcoder. Killer contents are in-store for you.
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