In the previous article we addressed the canonical error and in part, this error often has to do with the poor placement of Hreflang Tags on the site, because Google does not recognize that it can be in several languages (being international), places the pages with the canonical error. The Hreflang Tag is what allows Google to demonstrate that there are many pages with the same content, but in different languages, be they Portuguese, English, Spanish, etc.
Hreflang Tag
As globalization advances and companies expand around the world, websites increasingly need to demonstrate multiple languages. This is due to the fact that people all over the world may have an interest in your products or services, so each language must have its own content. The main thing that SEO technicians should take care of in a multilingual project is the “from – to” relationships.
For example, if the user is on a page about “Global SEO EN”, when he clicks on the English flag, the site will redirect directly to the “Global SEO EN” page, without the user having to go back to the homepage again, and only then to the page in question. This feat is made possible by the Hreflang tag.
Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a web page. The Hreflang tag informs search engines such as Google about these variations. If you are on wordpress you can also use several plugins that do this conversion, the plugin “WPML” is a good paid solution as it allows you to link “from – to” but allows manual editing of the content by the technician/administrator. You can also use plugins such as “Hreflang Manager Lite”, “Hreflang Manager” or “Polylang”, the latter is free and also manual, a great choice for wordpress sites without much expense.
If you want to add Hreflang Tags manually you need to put them in the header code of each page (in the <head>), or you can also put them in reference buttons, like PDF’s, with this structure:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://dominio.com/”hreflang=”pt-pt”/>
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://dominio.com/fr/”hreflang=”pt-fr”/>
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://dominio.com/en/”hreflang=”en-us”/>
Demystifying:
link rel=”alternate” = means that the link in this tag is an alternate version of the page;
href=” http://dominio.com/” is where you can find that alternative page;
hreflang=” en-us” is the chosen language.
Why use /”hreflang=“en-en” or /”hreflang=“en-br”?!”, Because Google recommends Hreflang self-referencing in its guidelines, Hreflang attributes must reference all alternative versions the site may have, otherwise search engines may end up ignoring or interpreting the tags incorrectly.
Conclusion
Hreflang is important for all sites that want to make their services or products available in other languages, nowadays the most spoken language is English, but each company may want or have departments in other parts of the world, and it is always advisable to expose on the site, all the languages that may be being worked on internally, this to recognize to customers, that the company has status and is diversified around the world, is international.
Today, many companies need immediate results, but the truth is that they cannot afford to implement SEO internally while leveraging with the priority of their business focus. If you still can’t handle these steps or don’t have the time to put them in place, Bringlink SEO ensures you get the brand visibility and growth you deserve.
Talk to us, send email to bringlinkseo@gmail.com.