Hreflang

Hreflang is an HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and regional version of a page to serve to users based on their language and location.

Definition

Hreflang tags solve the problem of multi-language and multi-region websites. When you have English pages for the US, UK, and Australia, hreflang tells Google: 'Show the US version to American users, the UK version to British users, and the Australian version to Australian users.' Without hreflang, Google may serve the wrong regional version, causing user frustration and lost conversions.

Implementation Methods

Hreflang can be implemented three ways: in the HTML <head> with <link rel="alternate" hreflang="...">, in HTTP headers (for non-HTML files like PDFs), or in XML sitemaps. All methods must be reciprocal: if Page A links to Page B with hreflang, Page B must link back to Page A with the same tags.

Critical Hreflang Rules

Use ISO 639-1 language codes (en, fr, de) with optional ISO 3166-1 region codes (en-US, en-GB). Include an x-default tag for the fallback page when no language matches. Every page in the hreflang cluster must reference every other page. Inconsistency causes Google to ignore all hreflang tags on those pages.

Note

Hreflang is one of the most frequently misconfigured technical SEO elements. The most common bug: reciprocal links are broken (Page A lists Page B, but Page B does not list Page A). When reciprocity fails, all hreflang tags on both pages are ignored by Google.

In code

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://example.com/us/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://example.com/uk/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-DE" href="https://example.com/de/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/" />

Key takeaways:

• Hreflang serves the correct language/region version to users

• Reciprocity is mandatory: all pages must link to each other

• Include x-default as the catch-all language fallback