hreflang
Markup that tells Google which language/region version of a page to show.
hreflang is an HTML attribute (or sitemap annotation) that tells search engines which language and regional variant of a page to serve to a given user. It prevents duplicate-content issues on multi-region sites and routes users to the correct localized page.
Context
hreflang annotations must be bidirectional: if page A (en-US) declares page B (en-GB) as an alternate, page B must also declare page A as an alternate. Missing return tags cause Google to discard the entire hreflang cluster.
For sites over 10 locales, sitemap-based hreflang is cleaner than in-page link tags because it avoids bloating every page with N-1 reciprocal entries.
A site serving en-US, en-GB, en-AU, and en-IN pages needs hreflang entries on every page pointing to each of the other three, plus a self-referencing entry and an x-default fallback — 5 entries per page minimum.
hreflang is not a ranking signal. It's a targeting signal. It tells Google which version to show to which user; it does not rank any version higher than it would rank without hreflang.
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The page Google shows after a search — far more than just ten blue links.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
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CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
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