If you have a problem with your hreflang implementation you will receive an email about an error in Google Search Console that looks like this:

hreflang-errors

hreflang error, “Errors in hreflang tags on http://www.site.com/”

It reads:

Errors in hreflang tags on http://www.dav*******njury.com/

We found the hreflang tags on your site, but a few of them have technical problems. Take a look at our hreflang report to see which of your hreflang tags have issues. Until you fix these tag errors, your website will not benefit from additional language or region targeting.

Why is this happening?

This error occurs when there is an incorrect hreflang implementation. This site in particular runs WordPress and uses WPML which is very easy to configure. Unfortunately, the “SEO expert” who works with the site has absolutely no clue how to do anything right. Every day the site is down or popping up a new error. This is very detrimental to the site’s health and basically ruining this person’s business. Oh well, not a Len problem.

The solution

Let’s say you have an English page and then a Spanish page with the identical content, just translated. The home page is site.com, and the Spanish page is site.com/es/.

In that scenario the hreflang tag on the English some page should look like this:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="es/"/>

And the hreflang tag on the translated page (site.com/es/) should look like this:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="/"/>

Got hreflang problems?

I have configured Spanish, Russian, English, French and more translations of websites to work flawlessly with another. If you or your SEO expert is screwing up your website by doing it wrong feel free to contact me today.

Len

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