If your content targets different audiences (for instance, USA and Australia), using hreflang tags will ensure search engines display the appropriate version to each of them. This way, audiences receive only relevant versions.
Avoid issues related to duplicate content by adding hreflang tags to your Squarespace website. Continue reading to discover how.
Adding Hreflang Tags to a Page
The hreflang tag allows websites to specify which versions of their content should appear in search results according to language and country. Implementing this tool helps Google distinguish between pages that are the same or similar and those intended for different audiences.
Tags can be added to pages using either the HTML header tag, or they can be included in a sitemap. While using the sitemap method can reduce redundancies and errors, using HTML tags whenever possible remains strongly advised.
While implementing hreflang can take time and patience, its importance cannot be understated. Doing it correctly ensures your multilingual content can be seen by users in its appropriate language and prevents duplicate content issues.
Addition of hreflang tags can also help your website achieve higher search engine positions for its various language versions. Hreflang works on a best match basis; Google will select the version most relevant to users when making its decision.
Squarespace makes adding hreflang tags simple, but it’s essential that you avoid common mistakes that could create issues. These include using x-default hreflang tags (although Google’s John Mueller states this practice can be optional) and missing return links (hreflang tags that only point in one direction are considered invalid). To help identify potential issues, the International targeting report in Search Console may come in handy.
Adding Hreflang Tags to a Category
If you’re building a multilingual site, hreflang tags are an indispensable asset in terms of SEO. They allow search engines to identify pages on your site with identical content but targeted towards different audiences – helping avoid duplicate content which is strictly forbidden for SEO purposes.
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes that let you specify the language and, optionally, geographic targeting of pages on your website. They can be added via your head> section or an XML sitemap; sometimes dynamic implementation requires manual code-editing the page directly or using tools such as Screaming Frog to generate and manually edit an XML sitemap before manually editing it afterwards.
Target your pages using either language or locale codes; however, whenever possible it’s advisable to specify both. For instance, if two of your webpages feature nearly identical content that targets UK visitors with British English spellings and USA visitors with American English spellings respectively, make sure they both contain an hreflang tag which specifies both their target languages (en-uk) and countries (USA).
Self-referencing hreflang tags should also be implemented on every page on your site to ensure the appropriate version of it appears in search engine results for each audience. According to John Mueller from Google in an AMA on Reddit, this can help ensure search engines do not overlook alternate versions when ranking pages based on specific queries.
Adding Hreflang Tags to a Collection
Hreflang tags are an indispensable tool for managing multilingual and geotargeted content on your website. By redirecting visitors to the appropriate language- and region-specific versions of pages, they improve user experience while increasing search engine visibility. As with any tool, Hreflang tags must be utilized correctly if you wish for optimal results; stay organized, automate as much of the process as possible, and stay on top of any issues that may arise in order to do this effectively.
Implementing hreflang is relatively straightforward. The key is remembering that both tags must work in tandem: for instance, when adding an English tag pointing towards Italian content, its counterpart in Italian must reciprocate and point back at English content as a means of maintaining proper search engine understanding as well as ensure all versions of each page work towards reaching the same objective.
No matter how carefully you implement hreflang, mistakes will almost inevitably happen at some point. That’s why it’s vitally important to conduct regular audits with an audit tool like Ahrefs that will detect and prevent hreflang-related errors before they have an opportunity to damage SEO performance on your site. Plus, using Ahrefs helps identify any other potential SEO issues such as broken links, duplicate content and canonicalization issues which might exist on your website.
Adding Hreflang Tags to a Post
Applying the appropriate hreflang tags to your website can help search engines like Google to better comprehend its content, delivering searchers with the most suitable version of it. These bits of code identify language and geographic locale of a page so search engines can match pages to queries more efficiently.
Websites often host different versions of their homepage for different languages and geographic regions. This is especially true of multinational brands with presence across many nations and regions worldwide.
Though Squarespace doesn’t support hreflang natively, you can still add tags using third-party plugins and tools like Screaming Frog to optimize and provide the best user experience possible for your visitors. Implementation may require manual work but is essential in providing optimal optimization and user experiences for all.
This issue often arises when there are invalid hreflang attributes present on pages on your website. Checking each affected page’s hreflang tags to make sure there are no clashing references (e.g. hreflang=”x” and rel=”canonical”) may help identify problematic pages so you can remove these attributes to ensure search engines use the appropriate version in search results.
