TECHNICAL · SEO GLOSSARY

Hreflang Tag

An HTML or HTTP header tag that tells search engines which language and region a page targets, enabling proper international SEO.

Definition

Hreflang is an HTML attribute (`<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="..." />`) that specifies the language and optional region a page is intended for. When a site has multiple language or regional versions, hreflang tells Google which version to show to which audience and prevents the wrong-language version from ranking in a given country.

Why it matters for SEO

Incorrect hreflang implementation is one of the most common and costly international SEO errors. The tags must be reciprocal — if page A points to page B as its French equivalent, page B must point back to page A as its English equivalent. Missing reciprocals cause both pages to be ignored. Incorrect locale codes (e.g., `fr_FR` instead of `fr-FR`) make the tags invalid. An audit that only checks for the presence of hreflang misses the implementation errors.

How DeepSEOAnalysis checks this

The audit validates hreflang tags for correct language-region code format (BCP 47 standard), reciprocal link consistency between alternate versions, a valid `x-default` tag for users whose language is not explicitly targeted, and conflicting hreflang declarations within the same page. The hreflang generator tool produces the correct cluster of tags for copy-paste.