Hreflang Methods of Implementation

You can use three methods to deploy HREFLang elements for your site. Google’s hreflang documentation states the three methods are equivalent to each other, and websites should implement the most convenient method for your websites.

This post presents an overview of each method and each technique’s pros and cons. Ultimately, your chosen method will significantly depend on your DevOps technical ability, the complexity of your website infrastructures, nuances to the specific guidelines, and how quickly you want to implement hreflang.

Whatever method you implement, the solution must ensure that it follows all of the rules of hreflang elements to be validated.

Hreflang Link Element (Meta Tags)

Commonly referred to as “Hreflang meta tags,” the hreflang link elements were the original method Google launched and required the site to put a specific set of hreflang HTML tags in the <head> section on each page listing the URL and all alternate variations in the hreflang cluster. A “hreflang cluster” refers to alternate URLs and their respective hreflang elements.

For this example, let us assume we have three websites. A US website and websites for the United Kingdom and Australia. This will require each to have three strings of hreflang tags on each page to represent the three alternate URLs in the cluster.

Pro	Con
The hreflang element is embedded in each web page’s code and includes the entire cluster of alternate pages.	Requires a method to add tags to every page
Some CMS can implement hreflang automatically	Requires each page to be indexed to validate the cross-tagging
Easier to validate with SEO diagnostic tools	Multiple content management systems may not be able to implement across systems.
	Adds additional code to each page – 20 alternates = 21 lines or 1.5kb of extra code
	Hard to remove URLs that are not valid

HREFLang Header Statements

Hreflang elements placed in header statements were initially designed for non-HTML pages like PDF files that do not have HTML code so you can add the tags. Very few sites use this method as it is a bit more complicated to implement and is harder to check with diagnostic tools.

You must specify a set of <url>, rel="alternate", and hreflang values for every version of the page, including the requested version, separated by a comma, as shown in the following example. The Link: header returned for every version of a page is identical.

Link: <https://example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en",
<https://de-ch.example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="de-ch",<https://de.example.com/file.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="de"

Pro	Con
Can add hreflang elements to PDF files	Requires a method to add tags to every page
Once implemented correctly no further action is required	Requires each page to be indexed to validate the cross-tagging
	If using multiple content management systems may not be able to implement on alternate systems.
	Adds additional code to each page – 20 alternates = 21 lines or 1.5kb of extra code
	Hard to remove URLs that are not valid

Hreflang XML Sitemaps

Google released the XML sitemap option as an alternative to solve many of the complexities of adding tags to each page. The flexibility of XML sitemaps makes it one of the most scalable methods, which is why we developed Hreflang Builder.

Pro	Con
It can be deployed quickly and easily updated over time	Requires a method to gather and match alternates
Can use hreflang across different domains and CMS	Requires process to add sitemaps to server
It does not require any on-site coding
It only requires the XML sitemap to be indexed to validate the cross-tagging of alternates.
Easier to ensure only valid URLs are in the output
Can include PDF URLs

Multiple Methods Simultaneously

Google has repeatedly stated that using multiple methods simultaneously has no benefit or problem. The only challenge is when the settings are different. If you have multiple methods ensure they match in both language settings and market assignments. Google has

Bill Hunt

Bill Hunt is the President and primary architect of Hreflang Builder, with over 25 years of Search Marketing experience working with multinational companies.

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