How Can I Improve My Hreflang Attributes?
If your business strives to be the best, it is only natural that you want to know how to take your hreflang from basic and improve upon them. The first thing you want to do to improve them is to ensure you aren’t making any mistakes. This can come down to educating yourself or getting a properly trained expert to create and sort your hreflang tags out for you. There are several best practices that you will then want to try.
How Do I Implement Hreflang Without Errors?
If you have HTML content, you can add this code to your website manually into your headers or XML sitemap. If you have PDF files, you’ll need to put your hreflang attributes in the HTTP headers. However, to do this without errors, rather than doing it manually, you may be better off using a plugin. Manual work increases the risk of mistakes if you aren’t an expert and takes more time, whereas a plugin is fast and efficient. You will still want to check these after they’ve been created to gain back some control.
What Are The Top Recommendations?
You need to start with the language first and then add the region when creating your tag. This is because region isn’t necessarily required, unlike language. These always need to be self-referential – the risk of not doing this could be indexing issues or a misinterpretation from Google. In addition, the alternate attribute must point back to their canonical and must be bidirectional. You should also always add a default backup page.
Our Strategies
Test
The only way to improve is to determine where you are starting from. This means using a checker tool to test all your hreflang tags. Our tool uncovers just what your tags are and where you need to make improvements.
Fix Any Mistakes
Mistakes are common in this area and range from incorrect codes used to inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent implementation, so even if you’ve been thorough, there is still a chance something has become amiss. A checker tool will highlight any mistakes, and once it does, you must take the time to fix these above anything else.
Use Hreflang In Your XML Sitemap
Having your hreflang in your headings or HTTP headers can slow down the loading page speed if you have lots of languages and a very large site. This can impact user experience. Therefore, adding your hreflang code into your XML sitemap would benefit you more. This is much easier to make changes through, allowing you to add and remove as you need without having concerns over hreflang tags, as it should auto-generate.
Use Canonicals and Bidirectional Properly
If you are using canonicals improperly, it can cause issues with consistency and take away from your hard work. For any hreflang alternates, you must use a canonicalised version of a landing page. Similarly, you must ensure your pages reference their alternates. Page A should list Page B as an alternate and vice versa. You would not have Page A listing Page B, and the latter then listing Page C, etc.