Hreflang Tag Generator

The rule that makes hreflang work

Every page in a set must carry tags for the whole set, including one pointing at itself. If the English page lists the Arabic version but the Arabic page does not list the English one, search engines ignore the relationship entirely. This is not a minor detail; it is the single most common reason people conclude hreflang does not work.

Language codes

Use ISO 639-1 for the language, optionally with an ISO 3166-1 region: en, en-GB, ar, ar-SA. The region is optional and only worth adding when you genuinely serve different content to different countries. Using en-UK is a common error; the correct code is en-GB.

x-default

This marks the page shown to anyone whose language you do not cover. It usually points at the English version or at a language selector. It is optional, and worth including if your visitors are more varied than your translations.

Translated content, not translated tags

Hreflang tells search engines that pages are equivalents in different languages. It does nothing at all if the pages are the same language, and pointing hreflang at a page that is really the original with a different URL is worse than omitting it: it advertises duplicates. Translate first, then tag.

Need this handled across a whole website? See our Technical SEO Services page.