hreflang Tags: The Complete Guide to Multilingual SEO

5 min read

hreflang tags tell Google which language and regional version of a page to show to users. Essential for multilingual sites.

Syntax

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ja" href="https://example.com/ja/page" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/page" />

Common Mistakes

  • Missing return links (hreflang must be bidirectional)
  • Wrong language codes
  • Missing x-default
  • Pointing to non-canonical URLs

Generate Multilingual URLs

URL slug generator for clean slugs across languages.