Many websites use more than one language to accommodate their users who are in multiple countries and that speak different languages.

Unfortunately, that duplicated content (even though it's in different languages) can be mistakenly used in search results for the wrong user, or even seen as duplicate content by Google and not ranked well.

The language changes might be very slight or vastly different. For example, you'd use different units of measurement and currency for English speaking users in the United States vs. English speaking users in the UK. However, the language would change dramatically when targeting Spanish speaking users compared to those that speak French.

Regardless of how much the content changes you need a way to tell search engines exactly who should see what version when searching from different parts of the world, or by users with different languages.

That's where hreflang tag comes to the rescue. Released by Google in 2011, this simple HTML code helps search engines understand the relationship between pages and the language/region it should be served in.

The use of the hreflang tag has many benefits. It can help improve ranking, increase conversions and lower bounce rates by helping users land on the most appropriate page for their region. For multilingual websites, this simple tag can be your biggest asset to generating more revenue.

Be warned: Google considers this tag a "recommendation". Yes, it helps guide the search engi...