What is a Hreflang Tag?

A Hreflang Tag is an HTML code snippet you can add to your web pages to help Google and other search engines display the correct language version of your page. The Hreflang Tag lets Google know which pages have multiple language versions. This allows it to index the right version of a page for the right users. This is important because users searching in another language may not be able to read the English version of your page.

How does a Hreflang Tag work?

Google (and other crawlers) read the Hreflang Tag and then spiders your site to find the pages that match the IDs in your tag. Once the crawler has found all your localised pages, it assigns them a localisation (language) ranking. This changes the way Google indexes your pages, and changes the URLs that appear in search results.

This means that the Hreflang Tag not only indexes the correct version of your page, but also lets Google know how the page should be ranked. The language of the page becomes a ranking factor that will change how Google ranks your page. For example, if you have a Spanish-language version of your page that scores on the keyword "widgets", a French-language version of your page that scores on the same keyword "widgets" and an English-language version of your page that also scores on "widgets", Google will rank the Spanish-language page first, the French-language page second and the English-language page last.

Will there be a website migration on for you? Then that's a great time to add Hreflang Tags where possible. At SEO Office Onder we are happy to help you on your way.

How do you place a Hreflang tag?

The Hreflang Tag can be placed in the head> section of your website's code. It uses a special syntax to indicate which pages are related and in which languages they should be displayed. Each language version of each page is given a unique identifier such as a "rel=" link.

Limitations of a Hreflang Tag

A Hreflang Tag is not a wonder tool. There are a number of things it does not do. There are three potential problems with a Hreflang Tag. The first problem is that the Hreflang Tag only tells Google which pages are in other languages. It does not tell Google which pages have additional language-specific content. A Hreflang Tag will not help you if your content also contains these keywords (in English). A Hreflang Tag cannot be used to indicate whether your page is translated or only localised for different regions.

Summary

The majority of visitors to your site will be in one language. For the rest, you need to provide your content in their language. The Hreflang Tag is a special type of tag that lets search engines know which of your pages are in another language. It is an important onder part of a complete International SEO strategy. The Hreflang Tag can also be used to display a page in multiple languages. It's not a perfect solution and you won't find it on every site, but it usually works well.

Continuing with Hreflang Tags?

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