In a globalized world, websites are reaching audiences beyond their homelands. The Hreflang tag can help you attract international visitors to your website. We'll discuss how the Hreflang tag can increase your website's exposure and how small businesses can compete with larger companies through effective implementation of this tag.
WHAT IS A HREFLANG TAG?
A Hreflang tag is a piece of HTML code that tells search engines which language and region a particular page of your website is intended for. It is useful for websites with content in multiple languages, but it is also useful for websites targeting different regions with the same language.
CORE BENEFITS
Benefits of a small business using hreflang tags includes but most certainly isn't limited to:
Better user experience - hreflang tags help search engines direct users to the appropriate version of your website, which leads to a better user experience and lower bounce rates.
Improved SEO - your website's SEO can be improved by using the Hreflang tag correctly. By using this tag, you will be able to avoid duplicate content penalties and ensure that all versions of your website are indexed equally.
Increased visibility - hreflang tags can be used to target specific languages and regions. By doing so, your website is more likely to appear in relevant searches directed at those languages and regions.
TARGET LOCATION SPECIFICITY
By using the hreflang tag, small businesses can optimize their websites for specific regions. For example, a small business in the United States that sells products to customers in Mexico, could use the tag to ensure that Mexican customers see the appropriate Spanish variant spoken in Mexico on website.
Such quality of specificity allows for small businesses to compete with larger, more capital-backed firms, and really give these large firms a marketing headache.
OFFER MULTIPLE LANGUAGES
For businesses offering multiple languages on their website, the Hreflang tag can ensure that each version of the website is correctly indexed. In doing so, small businesses can compete with large companies that offer their websites in multiple languages and reach a global audience.
AVOID DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTIES
Hreflang tags can help small businesses avoid duplicate content penalties when they have more than one version of their website. In order to avoid being penalized by search engines, small businesses can ensure each version of their website is indexed correctly by indicating which version is intended for what language and region.
Having more than one language available on your site can accidently cause your Content Management System (CMS), such as Wix, WordPress, Zypros, etc. to repeat the same words in English onto the other page.
Therefore, the indexation and indication of what version your subdomain or subfolder German site for example, will allow for search engine algorithms to clearly understand that yes, this is indeed is a German version of the same English website.
TOP TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT EFFECTIVE HREFLANG TAGS
Online tools whether free or subscription-based, are an incredibly resourceful way of effecting these hrefland tags. A few popular ones include:
Wix.com - Wix's CMS automatically embeds hreflang tags onto your site once you choose to translate via the Google Translate CMS extension or other CMS extensions.
SERanking.com - SERanking is my personal favourite, not a CMS though, but an SEO Audit tool, that can help implement hreflangs and check up on their performance, amongst many other Technical and Local SEO specialty facilities SERanking.com offers.
Schema.org - schema markup that you can directly embed code into your website's HTML structures to implement hreflang tags, amongst many other kinds of schema markup, in many more programming languages than HTML.
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