hreflang is an HTML link tag attribute that declares language and regional variants of a page. Sites with multiple language or region versions must implement hreflang correctly so search engines and AI agents serve the right variant to each user. Without hreflang, multilingual sites often see the wrong language served, hurting rankings and AI citation accuracy.
Self-referential link tags in the head: <link rel='alternate' hreflang='en-us' href='https://example.com/' /> for each language/region variant of the page. Plus an x-default for the fallback. Each variant must declare hreflang back to itself and to every other variant.
Missing self-reference. Inconsistent declarations across variants (page A links to B but B doesn't link to A). Using wrong language codes (en-uk doesn't exist; the correct code is en-gb). Putting hreflang in robots-disallowed pages.
Search Console's International Targeting report flags errors. The free Readiness Check tests for hreflang presence and counts variants.
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