The Ultimate Guide to Hreflang Tags [+4 Generators & Testing Tools]

If your business spans multiple countries, you need to optimize your website for all users in different regions who visit your website.

This is possible by using the hreflang tag, which tells search engines the language of your content.

This article will answer all your hreflang questions in detail and list 4 hreflang generators and testing tools.

So let’s dive in!

What is Frefran?

Hreflang is an HTML attribute that tells search engines about the relationship between multiple versions of pages in different languages ​​on your website.

Introduced by Google in 2011, the hreflang tag is required when creating content targeted to a specific geolocation audience.

For example, if you create a German version of your English website, using the hreflang tag will tell search engines that you have done so and will show the correct version of search results to users who understand German.

Let’s take our website “” as an example.

If you are located in the United States, you may see a U.S. English version of our website.

However, if you live in Germany, you will see the German version of the website.

Hreflang helps improve conversion rates by ensuring that your target users have access to the correct version of search results.

Advantages of Hreflang in SEO

One of the main benefits of using hreflang tags is that it gives your content international SEO impact.

If your vision is to expand your online business globally, the hreflang tag acts as a signal to search engines so that search results are delivered to users in their local or preferred language.

This improves the user experience when searching in that location, increases conversion rates, and even boosts search engine rankings.

In addition to that, it also helps prevent duplicate content issues.

Even if you have nearly similar content optimized for two or more languages, search engines can’t tell the difference between them and therefore see it as duplicate content. This can affect your page’s ranking.

However, hreflang helps search engines make clear that similar content on your website is optimized for different regions or languages.

This allows global SEO brands to escape penalties caused by duplicate content.

What is the Hreflang tag and what can you accomplish with it?

The Hreflang tag is a link tag attribute for marking pages with similar content, but is optimized for different languages ​​and regions.

In other words, these are snippets of code that help web crawlers understand where web pages are displayed to users.

Hreflang tags are an important part of your international SEO strategy. Moreover, with these tags you can accomplish much more than just optimizing your website for multilingual content.

Here are some important ways the hreflang tag can help.

• Optimize your website for different countries and languages
• Protect your website from duplicate content issues
• Helping global brands target local markets
• Improved conversion rates and page rankings

How is normalization different from Hreflang?

Canonical tags tell search engines to index pages with original content higher.

In other words, if multiple websites have similar content, canonical tags suggest to search engines that they should index the original website and ignore the other websites.

Helps promote URLs containing master content.

On the other hand, hreflang suggests to search engines to index the searched page and all other pages with similar content in different languages.

It then tells search engines to promote the most relevant URLs based on the user’s location and language preference.

How do Hreflang tags affect website rankings?

Hreflang allows you to display your website in different locations and languages ​​without duplication issues. However, it will not affect your website’s ranking in any way.

In other words, adding hreflang tags will not make your website rank higher or lower in search engine results.

It simply tells search engines about the relationship between websites in another language.

Note: Using hreflang tags may increase your website’s traffic, but it does not affect your search rankings.

How do I construct and implement Hreflang tags?

There are three ways to create and implement hreflang tags:

#1. HTML header

Adding a <link> element to a section of the page that points to a specific language in the HTML header looks like this:

 <link rel=“alternate” hreflang=“en-us”href=“http//example.com/home”/>

#2.HTTP header

If you create alternative pages, such as PDFs or other non-HTML files, you can specify alternative language versions using HTTP headers.

 http://example.com/>;rel=alternate;hreflang=“en-us” <http://de.example.com/>;rel=“alternate”;hreflang=“de”

#3. XML sitemap

Instead of changing HTTP or HTML headers, you can also use a sitemap to implement all tags and tell search engines different language variants for different URLs.

This is an easy way to prepend the URL with <xhtml:link like this:

 <xhtml:link rel=“alternate”hreflang=“en-us” href=“x-default”

After adding all relevant tags to one file, you can submit your updated sitemap to Google Search Console.

How do I find and resolve Hreflang issues?

Problems can occur with hreflang attributes that slip through the net. The best way to discover such issues is to crawl your website using a third-party auditing tool.

Let’s take a look at some common issues related to hreflang tags and how to fix them.

5 mistakes to avoid when using Hreflang tags

While setting up hreflang tags, you may encounter several issues that can cause decreased website traffic and duplicate content issues.

Here are some common problems you may encounter during setup and how to resolve them.

#1.No self-referential attribute

Not self-referencing hreflang can significantly reduce your website’s traffic. Thanks to multiple site audit tools, you can scan for different types of issues, including self-referencing attributes, and fix them right away.

#2.Inappropriate tag

Incomplete or incorrect tag issues can include incorrect country or language codes. It can also be caused by entering incorrect values ​​in the HTML code. However, the web crawler will notify you of such mistakes so you can correct them later.

#3.Blocked page

Before using the hreflang tag, make sure you have the following:

• All pages listed in robots.txt
• Plugin noindex tag

This may result in your page being blocked and your website being removed from the index. Also, hreflang tags are useless if the page is blocked from being indexed.

#4.Wrong language encoding

If your website targets the UK, but the language encoding is US (US English instead of UK English), there may be a conflict for both sites to appear on the search results page.

Therefore, you should ensure that all sites specify the correct language encoding for their web pages.

#5.Invalid language code

We recommend using the ISO 639-1 format for language codes. The purpose of using a valid country code is to indicate that that particular language is used in that region.

Hreflang generators and testing tools to use

#1.Incrementer

Incrementer provides a simple hreflang tag generator tool that allows you to quickly create HTML hreflang tags for multilingual web pages.

The process of using this tool is very simple.

Enter your website domain, select the language you want your website translated to, and select a region if necessary.

The incrementer immediately generates an hreflang tag.

Copy the hreflang tag from the orange box and add it to the header of every page you want to convert from your primary language to another language.

Note: This tool is completely free to use. You don’t even need to sign up for the platform.

#2.Target the region

Geo Targetly helps brands maximize website conversions by redirecting viewers to region-specific pages.

Use IP geolocation technology to automatically direct website users to location-specific pages and improve conversion rates.

The platform comes with a URL shortener that allows you to create short URLs that you can share on social media platforms and drive traffic to region-specific websites.

Additionally, the no-code setup reduces spam by automatically blocking unwanted users from accessing your website or specific pages.

Geo Targetly provides a free hreflang tag generator tool to easily generate hreflang tags for location-specific websites.

Generate tags by simply adding your page URL, preferred language, and country name.

#3.Systrix

Sistrix is ​​an SEO software that analyzes data from major web platforms and provides businesses with the best tools to improve their rankings in search results. One of its tools helps generate hreflang tags .

The process for hreflang code generation using Sistrix is ​​very similar to the process we did with Incrementor.

Just enter your domain name, language, and region (optional). The tool will instantly provide hreflang according to the details you enter.

#4.Aleida Solis

Aleyda Solis’ tools allow you to generate hreflang tags in different languages ​​and countries using Google specifications and valid language and country codes.

Aleyda Solis is an international SEO expert providing personalized SEO solutions to well-known brands around the world.

This platform allows you to generate hreflang annotations by manually entering the URL of your website or uploading it via CSV.

But that’s not all. Aleyda Solis allows you to audit common issues related to hreflang and drill down to find solutions to resolve them.

summary

Hreflang is aimed at businesses and websites that can get a lot of traffic from a specific location and take their brand to the world.

If it works in one country, it may work in others. Because if your target audience is product managers, there are product managers in every country who might need what you have to offer.

So, use the above tools to generate hreflang tags and globalize your business.