There are a lot of things to consider when you are building a new website. From the architecture(structure) of the website to your content strategy. Of course, try not to forget the design of your newly created website, and .. the location targeting.
Google is the biggest player in the search engine market. Speaking of the western part of the world, there are hardly any competitors to the Alphabet’s company.
Therefore, it is clear to most, if not all, webmasters, that they should, in one way or another, comply with Google’s view of the Internet…if, of course, they want their website to be visible in Google’s SERP.
Granted, you can always pay the search engine to push you forward in the result pages, by using Google Adwords, but it will be way better (and cheaper) if you are able to reach those results organically. By implementing SEO in your marketing strategy.
One of the things you have to do, in order to maximize your SEO results, is to show Google (by using the Webmaster Tools) which country you are targeting.
Enhancing the results of such an effort will be possible if you show the search engine(s) what is the language of your website.
To achieve the latest, you need to add hreflang tag on your website.
What is Hreflang Tag?
If you have a multilingual website where every piece of content is translated into every language that your website supports, the pages in some languages could be ranked better in the SERP, than the same page in another language.
Hreflang is a tag, that will show your customers the page in their native language, granted, you have it translated on your website.
Meaning that even if your English version is ranking better than the Russian one, if someone from Russia sees the English version of the article in the SERP, once they enter your website, they’ll see the Russian version.
Who supports hreflang?
As of now, among all the search engines, only Google and Yandex are supporting hreflang tags, while Bing doesn’t have any equivalent, and still supports language meta tags.
How to Add Hreflang Tag in WordPress
There are two really easy ways to add hreflang tag in WordPress.
Without further ado, let’s check them out.
Method 1: Adding Hreflang Tag in WordPress by Using a Multilingual Plugin
The easiest, and frankly, the best approach to building a multilingual WordPress site is by using a multilingual plugin.
These plugins will automatically take care of all technical things such as the hreflang tag, so you can focus on creating and translating your content.
You may want to use Polylang. It is free. But this is not the only advantage that this WordPress plugin has. Polylang has a very comprehensible interface.
Method 2: Add Hreflang Tags in WordPress Without Using a Multilingual Plugin
The second method is for webmasters that are not using a plugin to manage the different language versions of their websites.
You’ll have to install the HREFLANG Tags Lite plugin.
When activated, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled HREFLANG in your WordPress admin menu. To manage your Hreflang tags, click that new link.
Now that you’ve tuned up your HREFLANG Tags Lite plugin, you’ll need to go through the posts or pages, where you want to add the hreflang tag. When you open the post/page edit screen you’ll see a new meta box. It is labeled hreflang tags.
You should add the URL of the post that you are currently editing. Afterward, select the language of the current post.
The last thing you should do is to click the + button, so you’ll be able to add URLs of the other language version/s.