Are you implementing hreflang tags on your site? For multi-language sites, hreflang annotations are worth the effort because they can help your content land in front of your target audience. Most SEO resources point out that hreflang markup is difficult to get right—and even big sites get it wrong—but if you’re detailed oriented, you can avoid common hreflang mistakes.
Common Hreflang Mistakes
Hreflang tags are one of the more challenging elements of technical SEO. Google’s John Mueller has described hreflang as “one of the most complex aspects of SEO (if not the most complex one).” The good news is that if hreflang is implemented incorrectly, Google just ignores the signals. The most common errors include:
Missing Return Links
According to Google, missing return links is one of the most common hreflang mistakes, with the impact being the tags will be ignored:
“If page X links to page Y, page Y must link back to page X. If this is not the case for all pages that use hreflang annotations, those annotations may be ignored or not interpreted correctly.”
Simply put, if two pages don't both point to each other, the hreflang tags will be ignored. Why? Google does this so a page on an unrelated site can't claim itself as an alternative version of one of your pages.
See our hreflang audit example below showing where Squarespace had return links wrong on their own properties.
Using Incorrect ISO Codes
Google states that incorrect ISO codes is the other most common issue. All language codes need to be in ISO 639-1 format, and the optional region code needs to be in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format (i.e. “UK” and “EU” are not valid).
Targeting Only a Region
The purpose of hreflang is to target users in their language, you cannot target regions only—so do not specify a country code by itself.
Trying to Use hreflang for Geo-Targeting
We heard from one website owner who misunderstood hreflang. He thought the attribute would indicate to Google that his site was targeting Germany. His site used a country-specific domain (www.example.de), and this alone indicates a targeting preference. The hreflang markup he was attempting to use was meaningless as his site did not have translated or localized content.
Self-Referencing hreflang Tags
Each language version must include a self-referencing hreflang tag along with all alternate language versions. This has long been a best practice, and Google’s documentation is explicit on the requirement. Self-referential tags make implementing hreflang much easier—you only have to generate your markup once, then copy it to all associated pages.
Hreflang Audit: Squarespace
Note, this is a prime example of why every business—regardless of size—should use external consultants for periodic reviews and feedback. Many in-house marketing teams and agencies rely on junior staff who lack proper oversight or QA.
Years back, when building a multilingual website, we got curious if Squarespace was using hreflang on their global sites. A quick audit of Squarespace’s properties showed that the platform had no clue what they were doing. We then learned hreflang issues are so common that other companies such as Audible, Skype, and Hubspot had also made similar hreflang errors.
Among other issues, Squarespace’s hreflang markup was missing bidirectional links:
In the Squarespace examples above, the hreflang attributes seen on the English homepage should have been copied to the other language versions of the Squarespace homepage.
Additionally, the optional x-default value—which provides a fallback page for any unmatched languages—should all point to the English version or a neutral entry page.
What’s the impact? The hreflang tags will be ignored, hurting the chances of Squarespace’s multilingual content being shown to the intended users.
UPDATE: After reporting this, Squarespace quickly corrected the issues (see below). Before the fix, a German-speaker in Germany searching the term “Squarespace” would have seen the English version of the site in search results. After the correction, the SERPs look as expected with the German site showing for German speakers.
What can you do to avoid mistakes?
Reading all of this might make you might want to throw in the towel before you even begin. But the average small business will find it easier to implement hreflang than a large platform like Squarespace. Why? Most small business sites are far less complex, with fewer language versions and much less content.
That said, anyone manually implementing hreflang should be detail-oriented and operating on a few cups of coffee. And while we encourage do-it-yourself SEO, a second set of eyes is strongly recommended.
Read Google’s documentation before starting.
Use a tool to help you correctly generate hreflang tags.
Then make sure to validate your hreflang markup.
See our other guides on international SEO and multilingual websites.
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