In the ever-evolving landscape of international SEO, implementing multilingual strategies correctly is crucial for businesses seeking global reach. Weglot, a leading translation plugin, often helps streamline this process for WordPress and other CMS platforms. However, a recurring technical issue involving missing hreflang tags has led to critical challenges in SEO indexing—particularly affecting metadata visibility in alternate languages. This article explores the implications of this problem, how it impacted website discoverability, and how a server-side fix ultimately resolved the issue by rebuilding language recognition for search engines.
TL;DR
Weglot users experienced SEO challenges caused by missing hreflang tags, leading to non-indexed metadata for translated pages. Search engines struggled to recognize language variants, affecting international traffic and ranking. A server-side injection technique was developed to reinstate proper hreflang integration across translations. This method successfully restored multilingual SEO performance and indexed metadata in search results.
The Importance of Hreflang Tags in Multilingual SEO
When targeting a global audience, ensuring that search engines can distinguish between language variants of a website is essential. Hreflang tags are a foundational element of this process. These tags signal to search engines which version of a page serves which language and region, ensuring that users are shown the correct localized content in search results.
For example, a page targeting French speakers in France might have a tag like hreflang="fr-fr", while its English UK version would be labeled as hreflang="en-gb". Without these tags, search engines may struggle to determine how the content should be served, potentially displaying the wrong language to the user—or worse, not indexing the page correctly at all.
Weglot’s Role and the Problem That Arose
Weglot automates the translation and structure of multilingual websites. It dynamically generates translated pages and is commonly trusted to handle hreflang implementation. However, a troubling number of cases were reported where translated pages had the correct content but were missing vital hreflang metadata in the HTML head section.
This became especially problematic in:
- Google Search Console reports showing alternate versions not being indexed.
- Serious losses in international traffic for translated versions.
- Misalignment of language-targeted metadata and canonical URLs.
The root of the issue stemmed from Weglot’s client-side rendering approach. Since many of Weglot’s translations were injected after the page loaded, the search engine crawlers weren’t always picking up the updated head elements (where hreflang and SEO metadata typically live). Thus, translated pages appeared invisible to crawlers despite being live and functional.
Impact on SEO Metadata and Page Visibility
While headings and body content were visible after rendering, search engines experienced a blind spot when crawling the metadata. Critical page elements like Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions went unindexed, leading to misrepresentation in search snippets and ranking losses.
Furthermore, Google and other crawlers rely on these tags not just for displaying relevant results, but also for understanding geographic targeting. Missing hreflang meant that even valid pages were grouped under incorrect regions, dampening visibility in target countries.
Signs That Metadata Wasn’t Being Indexed Properly
- Discrepancies in Google Search Console between submitted and indexed pages
- Missing or inaccurate meta descriptions for translated pages during a site audit
- International rankings dropping despite content health
The Server-Side Injection Solution
SEO specialists and developers devised a server-side workaround to override the reliance on client-side rendering. By dynamically injecting hreflang and metadata components into the server-rendered HTML before the page reached the client’s browser, they ensured that crawlers saw the complete content from the start.
This server-side injection involved:
- Parsing Weglot’s language map on the server
- Generating hreflang and alternate
linktags based on site language paths - Inserting updated translations and SEO-relevant data directly into the document
<head>
The result was an immediate improvement in metadata recognition and indexing for translated versions. SEO audits post-implementation showed that search engines could now properly identify language-specific versions and display them accordingly in SERPs.
Lessons for SEO Teams and Web Developers
This case underlines a crucial truth: Client-side rendering alone is not always reliable for SEO-critical content. Search engines do render JavaScript, but behavior varies—and relying too heavily on post-load injections can jeopardize essential metadata visibility.
Future-ready international SEO strategy should therefore include:
- Regular audits for hreflang accuracy through tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb
- Monitoring crawl stats and indexing behavior in enterprise-level SEO platforms
- Ensuring all dynamic elements—particularly metadata—are rendered server-side where possible
Weglot continues to be a powerful solution, but its out-of-the-box setup must sometimes be fortified with additional engineering to meet enterprise SEO standards.
Conclusion
SEO metadata plays a pivotal role in how international content is perceived and served in search. The absence of hreflang tags from initially translated Weglot pages triggered visibility issues that many brands couldn’t afford. With the implementation of server-side injections, however, language discoverability was restored, highlighting the importance of robust technical SEO foundations in multilingual site architecture.
FAQ
Why are hreflang tags important for multilingual websites?
Hreflang tags tell search engines which language a particular page is targeting. This ensures that users are directed to the version of the site in their native language or region, boosting UX and improving SEO targeting.
How did the missing hreflang tags affect Weglot-translated pages?
Search engines failed to recognize alternate language versions as legitimate indexes of the primary content. As a result, these versions were often left unindexed or displayed incorrectly in search results.
What caused hreflang tags to be missing even though pages were translated?
The translations were injected via client-side rendering (JavaScript), which some web crawlers do not process—or process incompletely. This caused the critical SEO metadata and hreflang tags to be omitted when crawlers read the page’s source code.
How did developers fix the hreflang and metadata issue?
They implemented a server-side injection process. This ensured that hreflang and SEO metadata were generated before sending the HTML to the browser, making them visible to search engines during the initial crawl.
Is Weglot still a suitable solution for multilingual websites?
Yes, Weglot remains a robust and scalable option. However, for businesses where SEO plays a key role, developers may need to enhance Weglot’s default behavior with tailored server-side strategies.
Are there tools to monitor hreflang implementation?
Yes. Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and Google’s Search Console can help monitor the accuracy and visibility of hreflang tags on multilingual websites.
