---
title: Tell Google About Localized Versions of Your Page
description: "When you have multiple versions of the **same page** targeting different languages or regions, explicitly telling Google about these variations helps it serve the most appropriate page to users. ## Why Use hreflang and Alternate Annotations? - Google may find…"
url: "https://fsidm.in/knowledge/seo/hreflang-for-multilingual-multi-regional-sites/"
updated: "2025-11-06"
category: SEO
---

# Tell Google About Localized Versions of Your Page

When you have multiple versions of the **same page** targeting different languages or regions, explicitly telling Google about these variations helps it serve the most appropriate page to users.

## Why Use hreflang and Alternate Annotations?

- Google may find alternate versions on its own but explicitly indicating them is **best practice**.
- Useful when you have:

  - Same content in multiple languages
  - Small regional variations in a single language (e.g., US English, UK English)
  - Partial translations like translated templates with untranslated user content
- Localized pages are duplicates **only if the main content is identical and untranslated**.

## 3 Methods to Indicate Alternate Language/Region Versions

| **Method** | **When to Use** | **Notes** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **HTML Tags** | For typical web pages where you can edit <head> | Most common, simple to maintain |
| **HTTP Headers** | For non-HTML files like PDFs | Useful for downloadable documents |
| **XML Sitemap** | For large sites or when you want to centralize hreflang | Works well for big sites, needs XML editing |

*You can choose any one method or combine, but managing one well is easier.*

## General Guidelines for hreflang Tags

- Each language version **must list itself and all other variants**.
- URLs must be **fully qualified**, including https:// or http://.
- Alternate URLs can be on **different domains**.
- For languages spoken in multiple regions, add a **generic language-only version** for unspecified locales (e.g., en for all English speakers).
- Tags must be **bidirectional** (page A points to B and B points back to A), otherwise ignored.
- Use x-default for fallback pages (language selectors or default homepage).

**Example: HTML hreflang Tags in****<head>**

Suppose you have pages for:

- English (generic)
- English UK (en-gb)
- English US (en-us)
- German (de)
- Default landing page (x-default)

<head>

  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://en.example.com/page.html" />

  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />

  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://en-us.example.com/page.html" />

  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://de.example.com/page.html" />

  <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.example.com/" />

</head>

### **Example: HTTP Header for PDFs**

Link: <https://example.com/file-en.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="en",

      <https://example.com/file-de.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="de",

      <https://example.com/file-fr.pdf>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="fr"

### **Example: XML Sitemap hreflang Entries**

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"

        xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

  <url>

    <loc>https://example.com/en/page.html</loc>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/page.html"/>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/page.html"/>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/"/>

  </url>

  <url>

    <loc>https://example.com/de/page.html</loc>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/page.html"/>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/page.html"/>

    <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/"/>

  </url>

</urlset>

### **Supported hreflang Codes**

- Format: language or language-region (ISO 639-1 + optional ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2)
- Examples:

  - en (English, generic)
  - en-gb (English UK)
  - de (German)
  - de-ch (German Swiss)
  - zh-Hant (Chinese Traditional)
  - zh-Hans-US (Chinese Simplified for US)

**Don’t use only country code (e.g.,****be****is Belarusian language, not Belgium).**

## Use the x-default for Fallback Pages

- The x-default hreflang value is for a fallback page (e.g., language selector or homepage).
- It tells Google what to show when no language matches user preferences.

Example:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/country-selector" />

## Common Mistakes to Avoid

- Missing bidirectional hreflang links
- Incorrect or unsupported language and region codes
- Using region code alone without language (e.g., uk instead of en-gb)
- Not using fully-qualified URLs (must include https://)
- Forgetting to include the current page in hreflang annotations

### **Tools to Validate hreflang**

- Aleyda Solis’s hreflang tag generator
- Merkle’s hreflang tag testing tool