hreflang
In one line
hreflang is the tag that tells search engines which version of a page to serve to users by language and region when you have multiple localised URLs.
Going deeper
hreflang lives either in `<head>` as `<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="...">` or inside the XML sitemap. It's essential whenever you split content by language (KR/EN/JP) or by region (US vs. UK English).
The cardinal rule is reciprocity. If the Korean page points to the English page, the English page must point back at the Korean page. Break the loop and Google ignores all of your hreflang annotations.
Common slips include invalid codes like 'en-UK' instead of 'en-GB' and missing the self-referencing hreflang. The 'International Targeting' report in Search Console is the easiest way to keep this clean.
Sources
Related terms
Canonical Tag
The canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the master version when multiple URLs serve the same or near-duplicate content.
SEOSitemap.xml
An XML sitemap is a structured file that lists the important URLs of a site so search engines can discover and crawl them efficiently — its impact grows with site size.
SEOCore Web Vitals (CWV)
Core Web Vitals (CWV) is Google's set of headline metrics for quantifying page user experience — covering loading, interactivity and visual stability.
SEOrobots.txt
robots.txt is the text file at a site's root that tells search engines and AI crawlers which paths they may or may not crawl — a long-standing web standard.
SEOCrawl Budget
Crawl budget is the amount of resource a search engine is willing to spend crawling a single site over a given period — a critical factor for indexing efficiency on large sites.
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