Last Updated on 26/10/2025
Are you creating a website that supports several languages and regions? A bilingual website can dramatically expand your potential audience, but it can also be tough to manage.
The good news is that Hreflang tags can help your website’s Search Engine Optimization And User Experience (UX). It’s not difficult to execute, and you’ll see a spike in traffic and interaction soon.
We’ll review what hreflang tags are and some recommended practices for using them. We’ll next go over how to add hreflang tags.
Let us get to work!
What is a Hreflang tag?
Hreflang tags are a link tag property in HTML that allows websites to provide information tailored to visitors in different countries and languages.
When viewing the page source of any particular online document, the first tag you’ll frequently notice is this:
<html lang=”en”>
The language property indicates that this webpage prioritizes English content for an English-speaking audience over search results.
However, if a website wishes to target French-speaking viewers in France, it may add an hreflang property at the head of its HTML, as seen below. Let’s break this down for better comprehension.
Essentially, an hreflang string comprises three crucial components:
The rel=alternative attribute: indicates that this webpage is an alternate version of the original web page, not the canonical one.
The href= attribute: informs Google of the original URL of the substitute web page.
hreflang= attributes: This tag identifies the language and nation this web page is intended for.
In the above example, the alternative tag indicated that the URL https://fr.example.com was the principal English web page’s alternate.
French speakers in France were intended to be the audience for the homepage, as indicated by the tag’s end.
- In addition, webmasters might construct an alternate page for English speakers in France by changing the hreflang property to hreflang=”en-fr”, indicating that this page is for English speakers in France.
- A thorough hreflang implementation enables you to be more specific with geo-targeting and to provide local content to users worldwide.
How to Add hreflang Tags in WordPress?
hreflang tags are extremely useful on WordPress websites, but only when used correctly. There are three techniques for adding these tags to your website.
Plugins are the simplest and most popular technique. You may, however, adjust your website’s header and XML sitemap. Let’s look at all three approaches.
a. hreflang WordPress Plugins
The simplest way to implement hreflang is to use a WordPress plugin. Plugins such as MultilingualPress automatically add hreflang tags and should not create any performance issues:
In the post editor, you can access the MultilingualPress translation tool. When you approve a translation, the plugin inserts the corresponding hreflang tags into your site’s header.
- The functions of translation are not restricted to articles only; they extend to tags, categories, and seamlessly integrate with plugins like Yoast and WooCommerce.
- Another plugin option for hreflang implementation is Polylang.
- It is a popular, free solution for managing WordPress websites in various languages.
- You may produce material as normal and then specify a language for it.
- After that, it will handle the hreflang tags for you.
b. Add hreflang to <head>
You may add these tags to your WordPress website without using a plugin by modifying the header.php file. To access this file, go to Appearance > Theme Editor or utilize File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
After opening the file, look for the opener and paste the following code:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/content”/>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-default” href=”http://example.com/content”/>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”http://example.com/content”/>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”http://example.com/es/content”/>
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”http://example.com/fr/content”/>
In this example, we must insert the tags into the English language material. The x-default and English hreflang tags also link to the English content page.
The Spanish and French hreflang tags, on the other hand, send visitors to the correct language version of the page. Of course, you may include additional hreflang tags for any other languages used on your website.
c. Add hreflang to your WordPress XML Sitemap
If you do not want to alter your header.php file, you may instead update your site’s XML sitemap.
Using this strategy assures that Google can identify and correctly index your alternate-language sites. Updating your sitemap decreases the size of your web pages, resulting in quicker loading times. The hreflang tags for your XML sitemap vary slightly:
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/content</loc>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”http://www.example.com/es/content”/>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”http//www.example.com/fr/content”/>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/es/content</loc>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”http//www.example.com/content”/>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”http//www.example.com/fr/content”/>
</url><url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/content</loc>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es-es” href=”http://www.example.com/es/content”/>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”http//www.example.com/fr/content”/>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/es/content</loc>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”http//www.example.com/content”/>
<xhtml:link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr-fr” href=”http//www.example.com/fr/content”/>
</url>
While changing your XML sitemap helps with indexing, it can also be difficult. If you have a huge website, your sitemap may grow bloated.
Adding hreflang tags to the sitemap may also take longer than utilizing the other approaches mentioned above.
Why are hreflang tags important in international SEO?
a. Hreflang SEO Helps to Signal Web Page Relevance
The hreflang tag indicates to Google which versions of your web pages are most relevant for specific search queries. It also indicates how high Google should position these pages in search results.
Here’s how it works.
- Hreflang tags inform Google that a webpage has many language and regional versions.
- They give a link to that webpage.
- They identify the language and area of the specific version that Google is investigating.
Using this information, Google calculates which version of the web page is most relevant to searchers with certain language or geographic preferences. Users from Japan may find that your web page is intended for them with the use of an hreflang tag.
When Google encounters the hreflang element, it considers the page particularly relevant to Japanese visitors and may rank it higher in searches from Japan, resulting in increased exposure and traffic.
Consider the case when your website lacks an hreflang tag. In this instance, Google may choose to offer it to Japanese searchers regardless. However, if your website is in English, a Japanese searcher may be less interested in reading it and more likely to leave (or “bounce”) immediately after landing.
As a result, Google will analyze this user behavior and determine that your website is less relevant to Japanese searchers. As a result, your website may not rank as high or receive as much traffic from future Japanese search inquiries.
b. Hreflang Tags Can Help You Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties
When developing language- and regional-specific versions of your web pages, you may translate their content into multiple languages, resulting in pages with extremely distinct content.
In contrast, certain language variations, such as pages in English for American and British audiences, may simply require small content modifications in the same language. The result is a website with pages containing extremely similar content.
This might lead to duplicate content issues because Google aims to offer searchers pages with unique content. If it finds duplicate material on websites, it may rank only one of them.
Or if Google believes the website owner is attempting to influence its search rankings, It may elect not to rank any of the web pages.
- Needless to say, all of this will make it difficult for you to drive searches to your website.
- Fortunately, you may avoid duplicate content penalties by using hreflang tags.
- You notify Google that your web pages with hreflang tags are intended for different audiences and should not be considered identical content.
c. Hreflang Tags are Not Directives
However, be careful not to treat hreflang tags as directives.
Google may not necessarily show the web page version you want it to, despite proper hreflang implementation helping It determine the most relevant version for searchers.
That’s because Google may also consider other SEO variables when deciding on the relevancy of a web page (and consequently how high to rank it) for any specific search query.
Examples of these characteristics are your website’s load time, mobile friendliness, and domain authority.
The user’s Google search preferences can influence the results. Users surfing from France with English as their language selection will, for the most part, get search results in English rather than French.
- Of course, this does not mean you should ignore hreflang or SEO best practices entirely.
- As previously established, hreflang tags are vital because they indicate which web pages are most suitable for specific search queries.
- Then, when your web page meets a searcher’s intent (that is, it fulfills the user’s principal purpose when searching a query in a search engine).
- Google will recognize that your web page is particularly relevant for that specific search. It may then rank it higher for similar queries in the future.
Useful tools for implementing hreflang
Now that you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably thinking, “Wow, this is hard!” We know; that’s what we thought when we first learned about it. Fortunately, there are several tools accessible if you want to start adopting hreflang.
a. hreflang Tag Generator
Aleyda Solis, who has written extensively on this subject, has developed a useful hreflang tag generator that lets you build link elements. Even if you’re not using a link element implementation, this might still be beneficial for creating sample code.
b. hreflang Tag Checker
We recommend two tools to ensure the hreflang tags on your website or in your XML Sitemap are correct. Merkle offers the hreflang Tags Testing Tool, which lets you quickly enter a URL.
In addition, you may utilize a Chrome extension while browsing a page. The program reads a page’s hreflang tags and scans them to see if they link back to your current URL. You can obtain the Hreflang Tag Checker from the Chrome Web Store.
Conclusion
If you have a website with content in various languages, hreflang tags help Google deliver the correct pages to the right users.
Fortunately, there are various ways to add hreflang tags, with the most straightforward being to install a specialized plugin.
Using hreflang tags is a fantastic way to help search engines deliver the right page results to visitors searching in different languages and regions.
By effectively implementing hreflang, you can eliminate duplicate content concerns, enhance the user experience, and give your content a significant worldwide SEO boost.
One final point to consider is that integrating hreflang properties necessitates meticulous attention to detail. Even the tiniest error can result in lost ranks and duplication, but performing it correctly can yield little benefits for both websites and visitors.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the significance of the hreflang tag?
The hreflang tag indicates to Google which versions of your web pages are most relevant for specific search queries. It also indicates how high Google should position these pages in search results. Here’s how it works. Hreflang tags inform Google that a webpage has several language and regional variations.
2. What is the full form of “href”?
Href stands for hypertext reference. It is the source of the tag’s file. You may use both not just to connect an external CSS file, but also to use tags as a conventional hyperlink.
3. Does Bing employ hreflang?
Bing does not use hreflang tags; instead, it relies on language meta tags to determine the relevance of web pages to regions and languages.
