Hreflang Tags Generator

It tells Google that a page has other versions for other languages or countries, and which URL goes with which. Google uses that to show each person the version that fits their language and location. It isn't a ranking boost.

x-default is the page for people whose language or country doesn't match any version you listed. Most sites point it at their main page or at a page where visitors pick a language. x-default is optional. It's still worth adding, so the tool warns you when there isn't one.

Yes. Each version should list every version in the set, itself included. If the French page points to the English page and the English page doesn't point back, Google can ignore that pair. That's why the sitemap output repeats the full set under every URL.

The language is a two-letter ISO 639-1 code, like en, fr or ja. You can add a country after it with a hyphen, using an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, like en-GB or es-MX. A country can't be used on its own. Watch out for common guesses that are wrong. The United Kingdom is GB, not UK, and Japanese is ja, not jp.

Any of the three works, and you only need one. HTML tags are the simplest on a small site. A sitemap keeps the markup out of your pages, which helps when you have lots of versions. The HTTP Link header is for files that have no HTML head, like PDFs.

Yes. Use the whole address with https:// and the domain. Relative paths like /fr/ don't work in hreflang. Each URL should also be the canonical version of that page, not one that redirects or points its canonical tag somewhere else.