How to Optimize Multilingual Website for Local Search: Intricacies of Hreflang Implementation

If you make a multilingual website and want to attract overseas visitors, which ultimately leads to increasing sales, you need to take care of many things. You have to work hard not only to achieve the best position in local search but also to display localized content correctly. Also, try not to forget about behavioral factors.

In this blog post, I'm going to talk about significant steps in multilingual website optimization and dissect the ways of hreflang attribute checks.

What is multilingual SEO?

Multilingual or language SEO is the process of localizing your website content into other languages. This allows users to search for your website in different languages and find it in organic search results. It's as simple as that: if you translate your English website into Spanish to reach users in Spain, it's multilingual SEO.

This optimization approach allows you to expand to a broader international audience and eventually increase sales.

Key steps to success in multilingual SEO

If you want to create a multilingual website, here are some of the best practices you should try. Follow the steps described below to properly set up multi lingual SEO.

Determine the URL form for multilingual website

The first step is to determine in what form your multilingual website will be organized:

• Separate domains: C3PO.en

It’s the most crucial step. This option can be convenient for companies with local representations in different countries that are independent from the main office or, for example, work on separate site engines.

• Sub-domains: en.C3PO.com

Very similar to the previous form, but easier to manage. These two options are easily implemented on physically different hosts, so they can be placed in different countries.

• Subfolders: C3PO.com/en/

As practice shows, subfolders form is more advantageous because it entails fewer problems with optimizing and promotion and even simplifies this process. All it takes is to enter internal input address (written in URL after the primary domain).

• URL extensions: C3PO.com/?hl=en&gl=EN

This type of URL structure is not recommended because of a number of challenges such as difficult URL-based segmentation and inability to set up geotargeting in Search Console.

Anyway, you should choose URL form according to your aims because all of these types have pros and cons. You can find out which type is preferable for your website using Search Console Guidelines.

Run a keyword research for the chosen countries

For this purpose, hiring a native speaker or a qualified translator would be the best option. This will help you brainstorm seed keywords in the country-specific language more efficiently and use proper phrases for your website.

You should also utilize keyword research tools. They'll help you expand on your seed keyword list and evaluate metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty.

Some people use auto-translation tools to translate keywords directly from English into other languages (e.g., Google Translate). However, such tools are still not good enough — that’s why native speakers or interpreters are crucial for proper multilingual website SEO integration.

Implement hreflang with Netpeak Spider

If you have several versions of the same page in different languages with different URLs, you need to use the hreflang and alternate attributes to tell the search engine about it. For example, this is how it’s done for the English version of a web page with Italian and French ones:

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<link rel="alternate" href="https://C3PO.com/en/" hreflang="en-US" />

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<link rel="alternate" href="https://C3PO.com/it/" hreflang="it-IT" />

3

<link rel="alternate" href="https://C3PO.com/fr/" hreflang="fr-FR" />

4

<link rel="alternate" href="https://C3PO.com/" hreflang="x-default" />

Common tips for using hreflang attribute:

• In the hreflang block there should be links not only to alternative pages of the current page, but also to the current page itself. So English version of a web page should consist the hreflang tag to itself, the second one – to the Italian version and the third one – to the French one. Why is it important to implement hreflang tags on each web page in such a logical way? Because it affects your ranking in all of these regions.
• As you can see in our example, we also use x-default hreflang value. This attribute signals that this page doesn’t target any specific language or locale. So it will be shown to the user when there are no pages that would be more appropriate. Using our example, when Spanish-speaking user searches worldwide, https://C3PO.com page will be default for him. You can find more in Google blog.
• Do not add links to alternative pages that are closed from indexation (in robots.txt, noindex meta tags, X-Robots-Tag headers). It will reduce your crawling budget.
• Do not add links to alternative pages that return any response code other than 200 (for example, this error may occur when URLs in various languages differ and erroneously point to non-existent pages).
• The hreflang attribute indicates the language (in ISO 639-1 format) and, if it is necessary, the region (in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format) of the alternate URL. For example: it — content in Italian for any region; en-US — English content for US users; fr-CH — content in French for users from Switzerland.
• Characters should be written in lowercase when specifying a language and in upper for a region: hreflang = "xx-YY" href = "URL".
• Language attributes must always contain absolute URLs, regardless of whether the website has a cross-domain structure or folder structure.

Not correct:

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<link rel = "alternate" hreflang = "it-IT" href = "/it/" />

Correct:

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<link rel = "alternate" hreflang = "it-IT" href = "https://C3PO.com/it/" />

How to check hreflang attribute with Netpeak Spider

Probably, you've already noticed that the hreflang attribute needs your watchful eye. You have to configure it correctly and regularly check if nothing slipped through the cracks. I recommend you make hreflang attribute checks a kind of rut.

You can check hreflang attributes even in the free version of Netpeak Spider crawler that is not limited by the term of use and the number of analyzed URLs. Other basic features are also available in the Freemium version of the program.

To get access to Netpeak Spider for free, you just need to sign up, download, and launch the program 😉

Also, right after signup, you'll have the opportunity to try all paid functionality, compare all our plans, and pick the most suitable one for you.

1. Launch Netpeak Spider and enter the domain of your multilingual website into the 'Initial URL' tab.
2. Check if ‘Crawl all subdomains’ is turned on in the ‘General’ settings.
3. Go to the ‘Head tags’ in a sidebar and tick necessary hreflang parameters.
4. Hit the ‘Start’ button to start crawling.
5. When the crawling is completed, switch to ‘Reports’ → the ‘Issues’ tab to see the results.
6. Also, you can see the results in the diagram on the dashboard.
7. To export the results, go to the ‘Export’ tab → ‘XL (extra large) reports from database’, and choose the report related to hreflang checks.
   

There are 3 ways of hreflang implementation:

✔ HTML-tags

Add a link element indicating, for example, English, French and Italian website version in the HTML <head> section of the page.

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<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://C3PO.com/en/" />

2

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://C3PO.com/fr/" />

3

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://C3PO.com/it/" />

4

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://C3PO.com/" />

✔ HTTP header

Implementation via HTTP header is possible for non-HTML files.

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Link:

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<https://C3PO.com/en/file.pdf/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en",

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<https://C3PO.com/fr/file.pdf/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="fr",

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<https://C3PO.com/it/file.pdf/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="it".

✔ XML sitemap

If you have a large number of alternate pages, it is preferable to implement hreflang with XML sitemap. You should add xhtml:link element to all pages with alternate versions. This tag points to alternate addresses including current ones. Include xhtml:link element with links to alternate web page versions in <url>. This is how it’s done for https://C3PO.com and its Italian and French versions:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

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<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"

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xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

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<url>

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<loc>https://C3PO.com/en/</loc>

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://C3PO.com/en/" />

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://C3PO.com/it/" />

8

<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://C3PO.com/fr/" />

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</url>

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<url>

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<loc>https://C3PO.com/it/</loc>

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://C3PO.com/en/" />

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://C3PO.com/it/" />

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://C3PO.com/fr/" />

15

</url>

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<url>

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<loc>https://C3PO.com/fr/</loc>

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://C3PO.com/en/" />

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="https://C3PO.com/it/" />

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<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://C3PO.com/fr/" />

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</url>

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</urlset>

So it is very important to implement the hreflang attributes properly. You can check their implementation using Custom Search in Netpeak Spider. Select CSS selector and data extraction from entire HTML element.

As you can see in the first example above, all values will be extracted. In the second one, only the line with hreflang="en-US" attribute is extracted (with the link to the English version of the page for users from the United States).

Decide on your URL structure

For a multilingual site, you’ll have to create dedicated URLs for each language and/or country specifically. This will help Google properly index your website and store it in its massive database of web pages.

When deciding on URL structure, there are several options, so let's examine them below.

Separate domains

Adding separate domains or ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) is among the most popular options.

For example:

• www.amazon.es
• www.amazon.fr
• www.amazon.de

For this purpose, you’ll have to buy and manage multiple domains, which is a massive investment in IT infrastructure. Also, you’ll need to create new links to each domain individually, which is quite time-consuming.

However, having separate domains lets you use localized hosting, which can improve your page loading time.

Subfolders

Using subfolders is another popular option for creating and running websites in different languages. Thanks to subfolders, all your site's content is stored within a single domain.

Thus, your website's URLs will look like this:

• www.apple.com/es/
• www.apple.com/fr/
• www.apple.com/de/

Setting up different subfolders is relatively straightforward, so if you want to create a website version in a new language, set up a new subfolder for that language and start developing individual pages for it.

It's easier than rolling out subfolders and pages on completely new hosting setups. This means you can’t use localized hosting together with this method.

Subdomains

Subdomains are another option to consider.

Here's what your web pages will look like after integrating subdomains:

• es.google.com
• fr.google.com
• de.google.com

Adding subdomains has drawbacks similar to those of ccTLDs: they're hard to set up and quite challenging to maintain.

Many SEO experts assume that Google sees subdomains as separate domains. This means you may have to improve the SEO authority for more domains rather than just the main one.

However, just like in case of ccTLDs, subdomains give you the opportunity to use localized hosting to improve the page's load speed.

Translate and optimize your pages

Once you've set up the URL structure, it’s time to translate and optimize your pages for relevant target keywords.

When translating, don’t rely solely on tools like Google Translate since automatic translation services don’t convey nuance. This means you’ll probably end up editing sentences and paragraphs that read too formally or even misinterpret the information you were trying to deliver. Involving a human manual translation is key here.

In addition to the on-page copy, here's what else you should translate and localize:

• Currencies
• Time zones
• Image alt texts

While translating your website content, make sure to optimize your pages for the following:

Title tags

Title tags appear as the heading of your page in search results. These tags are the key piece of information that helps people decide whether to click on a particular search result.

Here are some tips on writing title tags for your localized web pages:

• Keep them brief and up to the point. Title tags should be fewer than 60 characters.
• Add a multilingual SEO keyword to help Google understand the topic your page covers and properly rank it.
• Don’t use clickbait. Make sure your page gives what it promises in the title.

Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions show up as the short explanation of your page contents in search results. They're not a direct ranking factor, yet can impact your pages' CTR.

Here are some tips for proper formatting meta descriptions for the translated pages:

• Keep a proper length. Google cuts off meta descriptions that exceed 120 characters.
• Use the main localized keyword. Google bolds the words and phrases that are most related to the query.
• Use active voice and directly address the user.

URL slugs

Google shows a URL slug in search results to inform users where they'll land if they click on a particular page.

Here's how you should format URL slugs on your multilingual site:

• Keep slugs short and descriptive. The best way to set up proper URL slugs is to include a language-specific target keyword there.
• Use hyphens, not underscores, to separate words.
• Use lowercase text.
• Use safe characters; don't include symbols in URL slugs so that they don't seem “spammy” to users.
• Avoid dates, as they can make your content seem outdated.

Internal links

Internal links forward users from one page to another within your website. Linking to relevant internal pages helps users navigate your website and find more useful information. Internal links also help Google discover more pages on your site.

When doing SEO for multilingual websites, add internal links to relevant pages in the same language, forwarding users from one Spanish page to other relevant Spanish web pages.

Build backlinks

Acquiring backlinks is an essential step in building an efficient, well-optimized multilingual website.

Google and other search engines see backlinks as votes. The more votes you have, the more chances for ranking well you get. Most of your backlinks need to come from relevant websites — both in terms of your niche and language.

Just like that, links from high-authority websites have more importance and weight. These are platforms publishing high-quality content: popular, well-known websites, bloggers, and news sources are all good examples of that.

Here are some strategies we recommend to try if you want to build backlinks to your multilingual website:

Broken link building

Broken link building practically means finding broken links on other sources. You can contact the site owners and offer to replace the broken link with another, working link from your own website.

This method works because nobody wants dead links on their website, as they negatively impact user experience. So, if you point to a broken link on someone's website, its owners will most likely replace it with a working one.

Digital PR

Digital PR includes receiving media coverage for your website to boost the awareness of your brand and what you offer. Digital PR also complements your link-building efforts as you enter new markets.

If you want to try digital PR, start by sharing newsworthy stories with content writers and journalists. If you’ve conducted some research that can potentially impact your niche, journalists may want to feature its results on their website, which eventually could give you a new backlink.

To make your efforts as efficient as possible, always remember to pitch your story to a relevant person. If it's a good fit for their article or website, they will most likely feature and link it to your site in return.

Competitor backlink research

Researching backlinks on competing websites gives you deeper insights into the content types that could attract links there.

By looking at your competitors, you can also create similar content types on your website and, eventually, acquire new backlinks.

Check URLs for SEO parameters with Netpeak Checker

To check how efficient multilingual SEO works for your website, use Netpeak Checker — a powerful, multi-functional analytical tool.

The app offers many features and enables integrations with various SEO-related services. Here's what else you can do with Netpeak Checker:

Integration with 25 other services to analyze 450+ parameters

Netpeak Checker enables integrations with 25+ SEO services: Moz, SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, Serpstat, Google Analytics, and many others.

50+ on-page parameters

Netpeak Checker delivers research results in an interactive dashboard. Here, you can monitor redirects, titles, response time, status codes, mobile-friendliness, etc. All you have to do is choose the required parameters and hit "Start."

Website traffic estimation

Netpeak Checker shows the traffic volumes on a target page, potential link-building donors’ share ratios, as well as traffic by location. Moreover, it shows the types of traffic that are prevailing on a given page (search, organic, direct, mail, social, etc.).

Batch Core Web Vitals checkup

You can retrieve data from Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website's loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability.

Integration with Google Drive & Sheets

Connect your Google Drive account to Netpeak Checker so you can quickly export any report to Google Sheets and easily share them at any time.

Summary

When making a multilingual website, you should bear in mind the following details to get targeted traffic for every version:

• Choose URL form your website will be organized in. If you want to simplify the process, you can use subfolders because this form entails fewer problems with optimizing and promotion.
• Double-check hreflang attribute implementation.
• Don’t use automatic translation.
• Set up geotargeting in Google Search Console.
• Make it easy for a visitor to choose other language versions of your website.

As it usually happens in SEO, promotion of a multilingual website can be successful only if it simultaneously follows the requirements of both search engines and potential visitors. So remember about balance between clear usability and technical aspects.

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