How can hreflang tags affect technical SEO?  

When your website has a lot of versions of content, it’s not unusual for search engines to send visitors to different URLs. This is called canonicalization and works to help you avoid duplicate content problems. However, there’s a downside to canonicalization: it can affect your ranking in the SERP. 

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You can use hreflang tags to let Google know which pages of your website should be indexed and which should be excluded from search results. This is especially useful for international websites that offer different variants of content for users from different regions and languages. 

The main reason to use hreflang is to make sure that your pages show up in the right version for people who speak a specific language or have a certain regional setting. That means that when a visitor to your site has the option to select a particular language or region, they’ll be sent to the correct page in their preferred language and with the appropriate currency displayed on the page. 

That’s because hreflang tags can tell search engines which version of your page is most relevant for people who have those settings. This can help decrease bounce rates and increase conversions by making sure that searchers see the content they were meant to view. 

It’s important to keep in mind that hreflang can be used with HTML files as well as non-HTML documents like PDFs. For HTML documents, you can implement hreflang by referencing the head> or header> section of your web page with a hreflang tag. For non-HTML content, you can implement hreflang through HTTP headers. 

In addition to letting search engines know which version of your page is most relevant, hreflang can also help you optimize the content on each variation of your site. This can help ensure that the most relevant information is presented on each page of your website, which can lead to improved user experience and higher rankings. 

When implementing hreflang, it’s crucial to be organized and automate the process as much as possible. That way, you can stay on top of any issues that may arise and make sure that they’re resolved as quickly as possible. 

You should avoid using hreflang tags that point to broken URLs because this can impact your ranking in the SERP and cause searchers to get frustrated. This is because Google can’t show its users content that doesn’t exist and pointing to broken URLs will most likely be ignored by the search engine. 

One of the most common mistakes that can occur with hreflang tags is to reference an incorrect language code. Ideally, you should always use the ISO 639-1 format for identifying the language and optionally the region that a variant of your content is aimed at. Incorrect codes can cause problems when you’re trying to target multiple variants of your content, so it’s best to double-check all hreflang tags before pasting them all over your website. 

There are a few common ways to use hreflang tags, but you should avoid adding more than you need. This can make your pages look unprofessional and could result in duplicate content issues.