No matter how much you try to stay on top of hreflang attributes, some mistakes will almost always slip through the net. For that reason, it’s crucial to regularly audit your website for hreflang issues and nip them in the bud as soon as possible.
The easiest way to do that is to crawl audit your website using SEO-hreflang regularly.
Site Audit is a cloud-based crawler that checks audit your site for hundreds of SEO-related issues, including those related to hreflang.
Here are the nine hreflang related issues Site Audit may find, and how to fix them:
1. Self-reference hreflang annotation missing
This warning triggers when a self-referencing hreflang tag is absent from one or more pages.
Why it’s an issue
To reiterate our point from earlier, Google states that “each language version must list itself as well as all other language versions,” so it’s important to use a self-referencing hreflang tag whenever you add a hreflang tag to a web page.
How to fix
Review the affected pages, then add a self-referencing hreflang tag to each of them using your chosen method.
2. Hreflang annotation invalid
This warning triggers when one or more URLs have hreflang tags with invalid language or locale codes.
Why it’s an issue
Search engines ignore any invalid hreflang tags, meaning that they may overlook alternate versions of audit your page. This is bad for SEO because it means search engines may not be able to show the most appropriate version of your page to users.
How to fix
Review the affected page. Check the “Is valid hreflang” column to see the invalid audit hreflang tags for each page. Remove these in favor of hreflang tags that use valid language or language-location code formats.
3. Page referenced for more than one language in hreflang
This warning triggers when one or more URLs are referenced for more than one language in hreflang annotations. For example:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://example.com/page.html" /><link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://example.com/page.html" />
Why it’s an issue
Each piece of content should only serve one language or language-location. Having two or more contradicting references will confuse search engines, and they may end up ignoring both hreflang attributes.
How to fix
Review the affected pages, then inspect the URLs that reference the page in their hreflang attributes for errors. Remove the incorrect hreflang attribute to leave only one correct attribute per language.
4. Missing reciprocal hreflang (no return-tag)
This issue triggers when confirmation (return) links are missing for the pages declared in hreflang annotations.
Why it’s an issue
Hreflang tags are bidirectional (i.e., if page A links to page B in hreflang annotations, page B must link to page A in return).
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Add bidirectional hreflang tags where necessary.
HERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO CHECK FOR THIS ISSUE…
Head to the International targeting report in Google Search Console and select the “Language” tab. Any issues relating to missing return tags are flagged.
This report also flags issues where nonexistent language or language+country codes are used.
5. Hreflang to non-canonical
This issue triggers when one or more page’s reference a non-canonical URL in their hreflang tags.
Why it’s an issue
Rel=“alternate” hreflang=“x” will instruct search engines to show the translated (localized) version of a page while rel=canonical attribute will flag that this is not the authoritative (canonical) version. These two attributes contradict each other and confuse search engines.
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Modify their hreflang annotations so that they point to canonical URLs only. Or, if you find a page with a rogue canonical tag, remove that from the page to ensure that the hreflang attribute is properly understood and followed by search engines.
GOT MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF PAGES IN THE SAME LANGUAGE?
Google may see them as duplicates and choose only one URL as the canonical.
For example, let’s say that you have two product pages, one for the US (“en-us”) and one for the UK (“en-gb”). The content on both pages is almost identical, with the only difference being that prices are in US dollars on one page and British pounds on the other.
If Google chooses one of these as the canonical, it’ll exclude all except for one from the index.
If you suspect this might be happening for a particular page, use the URL inspection tool in Search Console to see how Google views that page.
6. Hreflang and HTML lang mismatch
This issue triggers when there is an inconsistency between the declared hreflang and HTML language attribute for one or more URLs.
Why it’s an issue
Google doesn’t use the HTML language attribute, but other search engines and browsers do. It’s important to keep these two attributes consistent with one another.
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Change the HTML language attribute to ensure consistency with the declared hreflang attribute.
7. Hreflang to broken page
This issue triggers when one or more page’s reference broken URLs in their hreflang annotations.
Why it’s an issue
Google and other search engines cannot show its users content that doesn’t exist. For that reason, hreflang attributes pointing to dead pages will most likely be overlooked by Google and other search engines.
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Change the hreflang annotations to ensure that they link to working pages.
8. More than one page for the same language in hreflang
This issue is triggered when one or more URLs reference two or more page’s for the same language (or language-location) in their hreflang annotations.
Why it’s an issue
Referencing multiple pages for the same language (or language-location) in hreflang annotations only serves to confuse search engines. They will often ignore or misinterpret such directives.
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Remove one of the hreflang annotations so that only one page is referenced for each language.
9. X-default hreflang annotation missing
This issue is triggered when there is no x-default hreflang annotation on the page.
Why it’s an issue
Although x-default hreflang attributes are optional, Google recommends them as a way for you to “control the page when no languages match.” SEO best practice is to use x-default tags for all hreflang annotations.
How to fix
Review the affected pages. Make sure each of them has an “x-default” hreflang attribute set. Ensure that this points to a page not specific to one language or region.
To keep on top of hreflang issues that may arise over time, consider scheduling a daily, weekly or, monthly crawl in seo-hreflang. You can do that in your project settings.
New issues will show in the Localization report for the associated project after each scheduled crawl, so make sure to check this periodically.
