Site Audit: The Brand New International SEO Report
January 25, 2017
Owners of multilingual websites may have already noticed a new International SEO report for our Site Audit tool. It was in open beta while we were working hard to develop new checks for this report and adding them one by one.
Now the time has come and we’re ready to say that our work is done. Meet SEMrush’s International SEO report, which was designed to give you complete information about all possible hreflang implementation issues on your site.
The International SEO report is located in a separate tab in the Site Audit tool, and it will be displayed only if you have a hreflang attribute on at least one page.
If you still haven't set up the Site Audit tool, you can do it in no time.
Let’s take a closer look at the report.
HREFLANG IMPLEMENTATION
In the first section you can see a ‘Hreflang implementation’ chart, which shows hreflang usage statistics for your site.
HREFLANG ISSUES
11 hreflang checks are grouped in three categories in the Errors section. We consider these issues to be the most severe.
1. Issues with hreflang values It is crucial to properly implement hreflang attributes if you want search engines to show the correct language version of your page to the relevant audience. This check takes care of that and includes the following issues:
Unknown language code
Unknown country code
Underscores used
Only country code is used
Invalid order of hreflang values
2. Hreflang conflicts within page source codes This check helps you properly synchronize your hreflang attributes within your page’s source code in order to avoid unexpected search engine behavior. It includes the following issues:
No self-referencing hreflang
Conflicting hreflang URLs
Conflicting hreflang and rel=canonical
3. Issues with incorrect hreflang links You should make sure your pages don’t have any hreflang link issues, otherwise search engines will not be able to interpret your pages correctly. We search for these issues:
Relative links
Broken hreflang links
Redirecting hreflang links
HREFLANG LANGUAGE MISMATCH
This check comes in handy when a language value specified in a hreflang attribute doesn't match your page's language, which is determined based on semantic analysis. Such mismatches may confuse search engines, and your hreflang attributes will most likely be interpreted incorrectly.
PAGES WITH MISSING HREFLANG ATTRIBUTES As the name suggests, this check shows a list of your site’s pages with no hreflang attributes.
Also, in this section you can see a chart of hreflang code usage on a given page. Values in green are present in hreflang attributes listed on the page. Values in gray are not present in hreflang attributes. This check can help you detect pages with potentially missing hreflangs at a glance.
Everything you need to successfully run a multinational site is now available in one place. Rest assured, your users will always land on the correct language version of your website.
Stay tuned - more updates are coming soon!
What do you think of this update? Feel free to send your questions and suggestions tosite-audit-feedback@semrush.com
Semrush is a leading online visibility management SaaS platform that enables businesses globally to run search engine optimization, pay-per-click, content, social media and competitive research campaigns and get measurable results from online marketing. Semrush offers insights and solutions for companies to build, manage, and measure campaigns across various marketing channels. Semrush, with over 91,000 paying customers, is headquartered in Boston and has offices in Philadelphia, Trevose, Austin, Dallas, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Belgrade, Berlin, Limassol, Prague, Warsaw, and Yerevan.
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