The HTML Lang Tag will detail the default language of content, while the Hreflang specifies both the language and regional targeting for a piece of content/website, declaring this information to Google. If you are using them both, they must match.

Yes, you absolutely do if you have multiple websites in different languages so that Google and other search engines show just what you need to the right audience. This will improve the user experience for your audience and could get you more customers if you play your cards right.

If you aren’t sure whether you’ve done your Hreflang or HTML Lang tags correctly, use a checker tool like ours to reveal the results in minutes. This is the best way to know where you’ve gone right or wrong and where you need to fix errors.

You might experience Return Tag Errors or have used relative URLs. Another common mistake is using the wrong language codes. You might have added Hreflang tags to pages that are not indexed.

If our tools return results that you feel you need to fix, you can turn to experts for help or useful guides. A few quick ways to fix errors for common mistakes include double-checking that you’ve understood the correct codes. For example, wanting to specify it is in UK English may have led you to use “en-uk”. This is incorrect. It should be “en-gb”. If you have used relative URLs, this is a simple fix. You need to use absolute URLs.

A Hreflang will always start with <link rel=”alternate”. This is followed by hreflang=, and then the country code is added. This could be “en”. Finally, you end it on href=URL.

If you want to show Google and other search engines that a French variation of your website needs to be shown to French audiences, you need to add the country code “fr” after hreflang=.

This should look like:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://yourfrenchwebsiteurl/fr/”

HTML Lang En means you are specifying that the content language is in English. EN is shorthand for English.

You can do so in HTML tags or headers. The other option is in sitemaps. You should use the hreflang tags on all pages you have in a different language.

Definitely! Alongside a checker tool like ours that uncovers what your tags are, you’ll find other help resources out there. For instance, Google Search Console has in-depth guides, and an XML Sitemap Tool can help you create your sitemap with hreflang tags.