If pages from your hreflang group are not being crawled, it could be due to a number of reasons. In order to fix the issue, you will need to identify the reason why the URLs are not being crawled and then take the appropriate steps to fix the issue.
What is Hreflang Group and Why It has to be Crawled
A hreflang group is a pages on your website that are targeted at a specific language or locale. These pages need to be crawled in order to be properly indexed by search engines. If URLs from your hreflang group are not being crawled, it could impact your website’s ability to rank well in search results.
The Reasons Why not All Pages from Hreflang Group were Crawled
There are a few common reasons why URLs from hreflang groups are not being crawled:
- The pages are not linked to from any other pages.
- The pages are linked to from other URLs, but the links are not labeled with the correct hreflang annotation.
- The URLs are blocked by robots.txt.
Once you have identified the reason why the pages are not being crawled, you will need to take the appropriate steps to fix the issue. If you are not sure how to fix the issue, you can contact a webmaster or SEO professional for help.
The Importance of Crawling All Pages in a Hreflang Group
When pages from your hreflang group are not being crawled, it can negatively impact your website’s SEO. This is because the hreflang annotations are used to tell search engines which version of a URL to show in different languages. If some pages are not being crawled, it can disrupt the hreflang group and cause confusion for search engines.
Not all pages from hreflang group were crawled check is good for your website but not enough to get good SERP positions!
Check not only the issue but make a full audit to find out and fix your technical SEO.
How to Fix the Issue of Hreflang Annotations Crawling
There are a few ways to fix this issue. One way is to use canonical tags. Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a URL is the primary one. By adding canonical tags to the pages that are not being crawled, you can tell search engines that these pages should be included in the hreflang group.
Another way to fix this issue is to submit an updated sitemap that includes all of the pages in your hreflang group. This will help search engines find and crawl all of the URLs in your group.
If you are still having issues with pages from your hreflang group not being crawled, you can contact a search engine directly and ask them to crawl the pages.
You can find more information about localized versions and crawling in the Google Search documentation here.
Hreflang tags can also affect a page’s ranking directly, as URLs in a hreflang cluster share each other’s ranking signals. This is according to Google’s Gary Illyes interview for Webcertain TV, more detail in the video below.
Final Thoughts on Crawling of All Pages from Hreflang Group
Hreflang groups are pages on your website that are targeted at a specific language or locale. It is important to crawl all pages in a hreflang group so that the pages can be properly indexed by search engines. If pages from your hreflang group are not being crawled, it could impact your website’s ability to rank well in search results. There are a few common reasons why URLs from hreflang groups are not being crawled, but there are also a few ways to fix the issue. By taking the appropriate steps to fix the issue, you can make sure that all pages in your hreflang group are being crawled and that your website’s SEO is not being negatively impacted.
