SEO International : Managing hreflang Tags Correctly
Introduction
In this article, we’ll dive into the essentials of SEO internationalization and focus on one key aspect: managing hreflang tags correctly. This is crucial for multilingual websites to help search engines understand the relationship between different language versions of your content.
Development
What are hreflang Tags?
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes used to inform search engines about the language and regional targeting of web pages. They help search engines deliver appropriate results based on a user’s location and language preferences.
Why Correctly Managing Hreflang Tags Matters
Incorrect hreflang usage can lead to issues such as duplicate content, misdirected traffic, or the wrong search engine indexing of your site’s pages. Proper management ensures a better user experience and improved rankings in international search results.
How to Manage hreflang Tags
Here are some best practices for managing hreflang tags:
- Include the hreflang attribute in the section of your HTML pages.
- Use the correct language and region codes according to ISO-639-1 and ISO-3166-1 standards.
- Each page should have a list of corresponding links, including itself, with the hreflang attribute specified.
- Ensure that the hreflang values are valid and unique for each page.
- Use the next link in the language chain (e.g., “en-US” would be followed by “en-GB”).
- For regional variations of a language, use region codes after the language code separated by a hyphen (e.g., “fr-FR”, “fr-CA”).
- Include the hreflang attribute in your XML sitemaps for better indexing.
Solving Canonical Tag Issues in Shopify
In case you encounter canonical tag issues in Shopify, here’s a step-by-step guide to solving the problem:
- Log in to your Shopify store.
- Go to your Shopify dashboard.
- From the left menu bar, click on the “Online Store” button.
- Click on the “Themes” button.
- Click on the actions drop-down menu.
- Click on the “Edit Code” button.
- In the code editor, search for the “product.url” within the collection or products tab (it’s mostly found in the products tab).
- Erase the “within collection” part from all the results found.
- Click on the “Save” button and refresh your website to see the fixed canonical tag issue.
Conclusion
Proper management of hreflang tags is crucial for SEO internationalization. By understanding the essentials and applying best practices, you can improve your multilingual site’s performance in search engines and ensure a better user experience.
