Understanding the full concept of self-referencing hreflang tags could be a game-changer in your SEO strategy, so let’s begin!
What is Self-Referencing Hreflang?
Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a web page.
It aims to help search engines understand which language you are using on a particular page, thereby serving it to users who are searching in that language.
But what happens when a web page makes a reference back to itself using hreflang?
That is what we mean by the term self-referencing hreflang. This process entails that each URL should reference itself as well as any other URL versions in different languages or regions.
For instance, let's consider a website example.com which has English, Spanish, and French language versions.
In this scenario, each of these versions should reference not only each other, but also themselves. This ensures that search engines can understand the language and regional targeting of each page properly.
This is how it will look like in code:
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/es" hreflang="es" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/fr" hreflang="fr" />
Why are Self-Referencing Hreflang Tags Important?
Self-referencing hreflang, as the name suggests, is a scenario where each URL (or page) of a website includes the hreflang attribute referencing itself and all other language variants of the same site.
This upholds each page's identity while simultaneously recognizing its different language versions.
Here are some major reasons why the self-referencing hreflang tags matter:
🌟 Improves User Experience: When you have different versions of your website for different languages, there's always the risk of confusion for the user and search engines. Self-referencing hreflang tags guide search engines to serve the right language page to the user, based on their location and language settings. This results in a better, personalized user experience.
🌟 Increases Conversion Rates: By guiding users to a web page in their native language, you make it easier for them to understand your offerings and hence, their likelihood of converting increases.
🌟 Avoids Duplicate Content Issues: Search engines might sometimes misinterpret multilanguage websites as having duplicate content, which could negatively impact the SEO ranking. With self-referencing hreflang tags, search engines can understand the relevance of each of these pages, avoiding such potential pitfalls.
🌟 Boosts Organic Traffic: By providing the correct language version to the target demographic, your site can rank better in local search results hence driving more organic traffic to your website.
🔎 Read our blog post: How to Rank a Website in a Specific Country
How Can You Check If Self-Referencing Hreflang is Implemented?
You have a multilingual website and you've implemented self-referencing hreflang tags as part of your SEO strategy. But, how do you verify whether the implementation is correct?
It’s worth noting that a wrongful implementation of these tags could defeat the purpose and bring about negative SEO outcomes, such as directing users to the wrong language page, misinterpretation by search engines leading to duplicate content issues, and so on.
Hence, the importance of a proper check cannot be overstated.
You have the option to manually check for self-referencing hreflang tags on your website by looking at the source code. However, you won't find any clues as to whether you implemented it properly or not.
If you want to manually establish that your hreflang tags are serving the correct pages for the demographics they're intended for, you can modify your browser's language settings and/or use a VPN tool to imitate browsing from different regions.
There are also several online tools available that can help you verify if your website has accurately implemented self-referencing hreflang tags.
For instance, Screaming Frog SEO Spider offers a comprehensive check for hreflang tags. After crawling your website, you can visit the hreflang tab to review the details of your implementation.
While these kinds of crawler tools offer a significant level of thoroughness, they're not foolproof. Hence, a manual check, although more tedious, can help spot certain issues automated tools might overlook.
What Can You Do If You Have No Self-Referencing Hreflang?
Essentially, having no self-referencing hreflang means that one or more pages on your website have not properly employed the self-referencing hreflang tags. The hreflang tags on these pages might be referencing other versions of the page but not themselves.
A missing self-reference can result in misleading signals for search engines, which might lead to an adverse impact on your global SEO strategy.
The possible reasons for this issue may be lack of SEO awareness, overlooking the self-reference, incorrect implementation or website migration.
The process to tackle this issue involves a series of steps that need to be performed meticulously:
Step 1: Re-Evaluate Your Hreflang Implementation
Take another close look at how you've implemented hreflang tags across your website. This includes not only the pages where you identified the issue but across the entire site, as well.
Leave no stone unturned, because an issue in one corner could potentially be lurking elsewhere, too.
Step 2: Identify the Gaps
Once you've critically evaluated your hreflang tags, start by pinpointing where self-referencing hreflang tags have been missed. Take note of these pages.
You even might want to make use of an Excel sheet to stay organized — whatever works for you!
Step 3: Correct the Tags
The next step is to apply the self-referencing hreflang tags to the pages where they were missing.
This essentially means that each hreflang link element on a page should have a return link, including one that references back to itself.
For example:
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.example.com/" hreflang="en-us" />
Step 4: Implementing Changes
Once you've fixed the issue, it's time to implement the changes.
Always have a backup! Even if you're confident that everything’s right, having a backup before making changes is always a good SEO practice.
Step 5: Testing
The final step is, of course, testing. Use the hreflang validation tools mentioned earlier in this guide to verify whether or not your issue has been resolved.
Additionally, manually inspect the source code of your page to confirm the fix.
Should You Ever Not Use Self-Referencing Hreflang Tags?
Truth be told, self-referencing hreflang tags are immensely beneficial for multilingual or multinational websites, as they ensure the correct language version of a web page is served to users.
However, if your website caters to a multilingual audience but doesn't have different page versions for each language, the use of hreflang tags becomes redundant.
For example, if you have a website that caters to an international audience but doesn't provide different language versions of its pages, self-referencing hreflang tags won't offer any SEO advantage.
In fact, implementing and maintaining hreflang tags on such a site could be a needless exercise that consumes valuable resources without producing any tangible benefits.
The key here is to understand your own website and its needs.
🔎 Read our blog post: Local SEO vs. Global SEO (International SEO)
Let's broadly categorize the scenarios where self-referencing hreflang tags are not essential:
🚨 Single-Language Websites: If your website serves content in only one language and targets a specific geographical region, self-referencing hreflang tags are not necessary. The audience and the search engine crawlers understand the language, intent, and relevance of your content without them.
🚨 Zero Regional Variations: For websites operating in a single region and language, while also not offering distinct content based on demographic parameters, the use of self-referencing hreflang tags becomes redundant. Your audience and search engine bots can comprehend your webpage's intent without any additional language or region-specific signals.
🚨 Translation Not Available: If your website doesn't offer any translated versions of its pages, self-referencing hreflang can take a backseat. Having these tags in such cases might confuse search engines instead of helping your SEO efforts.
Conclusion
Self-referencing hreflang tags are essential in ensuring that each web page has its own identity while still being associated with the different language versions. This, in turn, aids search engines in understanding the page's purpose and relevance to specific demographics.
The effective use of self-referencing hreflang tags serves as a bidirectional communication tool between your website and search engines. It helps to appropriately direct users based on their preferences, and in turn, provides a superior user experience.
This not only boosts your website’s traffic but also improves your global reach and brand image!
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