Why you need to add hreflang meta tag to your blog and how to do it easily on WordPress with a free plugin.

It’s important to add hreflang meta tag (also referred to as rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”) if we have articles of the same content but in different languages.

Why we need to tell search engines like Google with have the same content but of different language?
For better indexing by search engine like Google and to avoid duplicate contents penalty. Also to tell Google our country targeted visitors.

We must configure properly the hreflang tag to tell search engine that the post are in different languages. Also those article pages must refer to other articles’ url. Say you articles in dual language, one in English and the other one in Malay; you must add hreflang tag to both article.

So with rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”: You tell Google the language of the articles and your targeted users are from a certain country. Thus, you need to find a way to put in the hreflang meta tag on your articles of what language it in and the url of the same content in other language. Refer to the articles by Google on how to do it (also include adding rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” intonation on sitemap) at: Google x-default hreflang or use use reflang

Now, if you only have a few blog articles it might be easier to put the hreflang tag manually via html editing but it is not practical for blog which might have dozens or hundred of pages. How to solve that? I have been searching for a free WordPress plugin that would help to do for a long time for that in vain until I found one, if fact it is the only plugin that I know that able to that seamlessly. The plugin is simply allow you add a language tag which you can configure in each post editing. You can also configure hreflang for  the homepage, page, countries and tag.

Language Selector plugin for WordPress allow you to add a link in your pages of blog that link between they and adds meta rel=”alternate” hreflang=”xx” and links in your posts, pages and tags that indicate that they have an other blog in other language

“If you have more blogs in more languages that they are independent between they and would you like to bind each, this is your plugin.” Download at Language Selector Plugin
Visit the author’s blog article at: Language Selector Plugin Author

Once installed and activated you can find the configuration section below each post on post editor.

It’s pretty easy to configure. There is 3 area you can configure:
1. The related URL
2. The language of that URL article.
3. The country targetted.  (Ignore it if you don’t have target country)

You can find the configuration area at:
1. Every post, page, categories and tags edit page.
2. At Language Selector Related setting page to configure the homepage related blog setting.

I find the plugin make it easier for me to add the hreflang tag, i hope you find it useful too. Thank you.