There are many different tactics brands can use when trying to improve the SEO of their websites. While keyword research and content marketing are both essential elements of this process, there are other important things to factor in, like the technical elements of the site.
One of these technical elements is the ability for a website to have increased accessibility and support, no matter what location users are accessing from. Hreflang sitemaps help to ensure this is the case by communicating to search engines the languages or regional versions of a site to display to users.
Below, we’ll explain the reasons why building an hreflang sitemap is important and how to do it.
The Purpose of a Hreflang Sitemap
- Proper Language and Regional Targeting - An hreflang sitemap’s primary function is to help search engines display a site correctly based on the region it’s being accessed from. This way, users are able to experience the content so it’s most relevant to them.
- Improving International SEO Performance - Although many SEO tactics can help brands increase their visibility all across the web, certain elements are region-specific. Hreflang sitemaps are specifically designed to improve SEO in different Google regions and can help to improve rankings and click-through rates in those specific countries.
- Preventing Duplicate Content Issues - When you have similar web pages designed for different geographic locations, an hreflang sitemap helps search engine crawlers avoid confusion and prevent them from assuming the pages are duplicated. This helps to avoid ranking penalties for the site.
- Enhancing User Experiences - If users land on a website that doesn’t require them to translate pages through different tools, it helps to create a more seamless browsing experience. This, in turn, increases engagement levels and often encourages visitors to stay on the site longer.
How Hreflang Sitemaps Work
An hreflang sitemap is essentially a master list that maps out all the language and regional versions of your webpages into one central file that search engine crawlers reference. This makes it much more efficient for them to crawl and discover pages instead of having to check every single page for individual tags.
Inside this XML file, each URL entry lists all of its alternate versions. It uses specific tags to define the URL itself, along with the correct language code (en), country code (us), or both (en−us).
Google then reads this file to understand your site's structure, then uses that data to serve the most relevant page to users based on their location and browser settings.
When to Use a Hreflang Sitemap
- Large Multilingual Websites - If you have a large site that contains hundreds of pages, trying to manually enter hreflang tags for each one isn’t practical. An hreflang sitemap makes this process much easier to manage in bulk and helps to keep everything organized within a single file.
- Subtle Content Variations - When needing to serve content in regions that speak the same language, such as America and Australia, but may have different language nuances or spellings, hreflang sitemaps can help these pages to still display these minor variations when accessed by different users. This allows you to serve relevant content to all types of language groups without worrying about your site being flagged for duplicate content.
- Multiple Currencies - Online stores need to show customers the right currency and shipping options based on their locations. An hreflang sitemap directs users to the correct regional storefront and helps ensure a smoother shopping experience.
Best Practices for Implementing a Hreflang Sitemap
Use Correct Language and Country Codes (ISO standards)
It’s important to verify the format of the language and country codes you use in your hreflang tags and sitemaps. You should ensure you’re always using the proper ISO 639-1 format for languages and ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 for countries.
If you’re inaccurate when referencing these tags, such as using "uk" instead of "gb" for Great Britain, it can cause crawlers to ignore the instructions altogether.
Ensure Bidirectional Hreflang References
Hreflang links communicate through reciprocal links. Because of this, making sure that hreflang references point to one page and then point back to the other correctly is critical. This then confirms to Google that any relationships between content variations made were intentional.
Include the X-default Tag for Unmatched Regions
An “x-default” tag is used when creating various hreflang tags is essentially a safe default in the event that a user's location doesn’t match what you’ve already set up. By establishing this tag ahead of time, it provides a format that still makes sense instead of displaying in a foreign language or directing the user to resources that are irrelevant to their actual location.
Use Absolute URLs, Not Relative URLs
Always provide the full, complete web address for every URL in your sitemap (e.g., https://www.yourdomain.com/page). Relative URLs (like /page) are ambiguous and can easily lead to crawling errors because they don't provide a clear, unmistakable path for search engines to follow.
Hreflang Sitemap FAQs
Is hreflang a ranking factor?
Not specifically, but it is another important element used to help influence regional SEO results. Since Google places a high priority on user experiences, making sure that search engines serve the right content to the right users helps to improve website engagement signals.
Do all international sites need hreflang?
This depends on the purpose of the site and the goals of the business. Hreflang is primarily designed for sites that need to maintain multiple versions of the same content. If your international pages have completely different content and serve different purposes, search engines can usually differentiate them without hreflang tags.
Should every page have hreflang?
No, only pages that have an alternate language or regional version require it. For example, if your "About Us" page only exists in a single language, then there's no need to add hreflang since there are no other versions to point to.
What happens if hreflang is wrong?
An incorrect hreflang setup can result in search engines displaying the incorrect language version of your site to users. At best, they will simply ignore the faulty tags, but at worst, it can harm user experience and lead to a decline in traffic.