# International Search and Sharing SEO

Help4 Builder Suite uses portable web standards first. Search engines, social networks, and messaging clients change frequently, so the plugin does not inject invented platform tags or promise that every service will render the same card.

## Standards emitted

- Canonical URLs, robots directives, XML sitemaps, and crawlable server-rendered metadata.
- Schema.org JSON-LD connected through stable graph identifiers and extension filters.
- Per-content `hreflang` alternate URLs, including language-region values such as `en-AU`, script values such as `zh-Hans-CN`, and `x-default`.
- Open Graph title, description, object type, canonical URL, site name, locale, locale alternates, image, secure image URL, dimensions, MIME type, and image alt text.
- X Card type, title, description, site handle, creator handle, image, and image alt text.
- Article publication, modification, author, section, and tag metadata when the Open Graph object is an article.
- Optional IndexNow delivery for changed and deleted URLs. The protocol shares accepted URLs among participating engines.

## Ownership verification

Settings include dedicated fields for Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Naver, Pinterest, and Meta/Facebook ownership tokens. Additional regional webmaster portals can be added as `meta-name=issued-token`, one per line.

The custom registry only accepts verification-style meta names and plain-text token values. It rejects arbitrary HTML, scripts, redirects, robots controls, and other general metadata. The `h4bs_verification_meta_tags` filter can register additional normalized rows:

```php
add_filter('h4bs_verification_meta_tags', function (array $tags): array {
    $tags[] = [
        'name' => 'regional-engine-verification',
        'content' => 'token-issued-by-the-portal',
    ];
    return $tags;
});
```

Ownership tokens are optional. Missing tokens appear as informational setup notes and do not lower page content scores.

## Localized pages

Open the Help4 SEO panel on a page or public custom post type and enter one absolute URL per line:

```text
en-US=https://example.com/service/
en-AU=https://example.com/au/service/
zh-CN=https://example.com/zh/service/
ru-RU=https://example.com/ru/service/
x-default=https://example.com/service/
```

When alternates are configured, Help4 adds the current page's locale and canonical URL as a self reference if that pair is missing. Every translated page should list the same complete set of reciprocal alternatives. Use a real localized URL for each row; do not redirect visitors solely from an IP address or pretend one page is translated when its content is not.

Extensions can provide alternate URLs dynamically:

```php
add_filter('h4bs_hreflang_alternates', function (array $alternates, int $postId, string $canonical): array {
    $alternates['fr-FR'] = get_post_meta($postId, '_translated_fr_url', true);
    return $alternates;
}, 10, 3);
```

## Preview compatibility

The SEO Control Center reports standards coverage for major global and regional search engines and for social, messaging, and collaboration preview clients. Most sharing clients consume Open Graph metadata; X adds its card metadata. Client applications may cache, crop, suppress, or transform previews, so use each service's preview debugger when a cached card must be refreshed.

The report names how each platform is covered instead of generating fake service-specific tags. For example, DuckDuckGo maintains its own crawler while many traditional links and images are sourced from Bing, so Help4 reports robots and portable metadata plus Bing ecosystem readiness rather than a nonexistent DuckDuckGo ownership tag.

## Extension filters

- `h4bs_verification_meta_tags`
- `h4bs_hreflang_alternates`
- `h4bs_social_image_alt`
- `h4bs_twitter_creator`
- `h4bs_open_graph_type`
- `h4bs_primary_social_image_url`
- `h4bs_social_image_url`
- `h4bs_international_discovery_report`

## Primary references

- Open Graph protocol: https://ogp.me/
- Schema.org: https://schema.org/docs/gs.html
- Google localized versions: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions
- Yandex site verification: https://yandex.com/support/webmaster/en/service/rights
- Naver site ownership: https://searchadvisor.naver.com/guide/faq-start-register
- Baidu Search Resource Platform verification: https://ziyuan.baidu.com/college/articleinfo?id=1003
- DuckDuckGo result sources: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources
- IndexNow protocol: https://www.indexnow.org/documentation
