+45 53 83 87 01The hreflang tag is an HTML attribute that informs search engines about the language and geographical targeting of a webpage. It plays a crucial role in international SEO by helping search engines serve the correct language or regional URL in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to users based on their location or language preferences.
Application:
The hreflang tag is used when a website has content available in multiple languages or variations tailored for different regions. For example, a site may have separate versions for users in the United States, Spain, and France, each in the respective languages and potentially with regional differences. The hreflang tag helps to prevent language or country-specific content from competing with each other in search results, thus avoiding duplicate content issues and improving user experience.
Implementation of the hreflang tag should be precise to ensure that search engines correctly understand the language and regional targeting. The tag must specify the language value following ISO 639-1 format and, if applicable, a region value following ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format. It’s essential to self-reference each URL as well as to indicate alternate versions, including both language and region.
Considerations:
When implementing hreflang tags, it’s important to ensure consistency across versions, indicating the correct language and regional URLs. Mistakes in implementation can lead to confusion for search engines, resulting in the wrong version of the content being displayed to users.
Regular audits of hreflang tags can help identify and correct errors, such as broken URLs or incorrect language codes, ensuring the tag’s effectiveness in multi-language and multi-region SEO strategies. Tools like Google Search Console can be employed to monitor hreflang tag performance and troubleshoot issues.
Best practices:
- Ensure accurate language and country codes.
- Confirm bidirectional links (each version must point to all other relevant versions).
- Regularly audit hreflang tags for errors or omissions.
- Use the x-default value for international audiences or when a specific language/region isn’t available.
- Keep the hreflang attributes consistent across the entire site.
