The hreflang attribute helps a search engine identify the version of a web page that matches a user's language and region and display it in search results. However, conflicts can arise when using hreflang attributes leading to incorrect search results.A website in multiple language versions is not a unique attribute of large-scale international projects such as hotel or airline reservation services. Currently, the number of relatively small online stores is increasing; they want to expand their target audience and allow visitors to choose the appropriate language in the website features.
This does not only apply to the English version of a website.Benefits of setting up a multilingual websitehreflang attributes and SEOThe use of hreflang affects the indexing of web pages and also helps a search engine identify similar pages as distinct language versions rather than duplicate content. This is especially important when using similar languages, for example English for residents of Canada and the United States. Using these attributes, a search engine recognizes the linguistic and regional structure of a resource.Hreflang tells a search engine that the page with Cyprus Mobile Number List the translated content is an alternative to the original and not its duplicate. As you know, duplicate content negatively affects website ranking. Hreflang tags and attributes will help solve this problem for websites with different regions or different language versions within the same region.Comfort for usersThe multilingualism of a website affects behavioral factors. If a user goes to a cross-regional website and has the ability to choose their native language, they stay there much longer. The presence of language versions reduces the bounce rate, increases the average session duration, as well as the number of page views which is the number of pages per session.Increase in profitsWhen a user becomes familiar with a web resource in a language they understand, the likelihood of a conversion increases dramatically. Often, different regions mean not only differences in language, but also in currencies, prices, contact details, delivery terms, etc.
The use of multiple language versions and unique content in each of them positively affects the indexing of the website.The hreflang attribute helps avoid penalties for duplicate content, especially in cases where alternative pages contain source language text, for example, only English, instead of translated text. When it comes to ranking, the primary language version of the website is normally ranked higher in search results.As a result, the website gets more targeted traffic from different regions. So, the main goal of multilingualism is to increase conversions and revenue.What to do if there are no hreflang attributes on a websiteThe search crawler can recognize alternative web resource pages in different languages. However, it happens that a suitable version of a website with translated content, for example in Spanish, is created for the public, but as a result of the search, a user lands on a page in English or another default language.
Specify hreflang attributes to display analogues of pages from a web resource to a search engine. There are three different ways to configure language versions : in the website folders (site.com/en and site.com/ru);on the subdomains (en.site.com and ru.site.com);on different domains (ensite.com and rusite.com).There are also options for mixed implementation of multilingualism, for example, when language versions are placed in subfolders on different domains. In this article, we will not consider all possible options and the behavior of search engines in each case. We will focus on attribute conflicts and ways to avoid them.