Languages & regions
hreflang annotations without return links
One of the 136 checks Lala SEO runs on every page of a site in a free audit.
- How serious
- Serious. Can stop pages from appearing in Google, or from working for visitors. Fix these first.
- Based on
- Google's own documentation
What is wrong
When you use hreflang tags to tell Google that a page has versions in other languages or for other countries, those tags must point both ways. If your English page links to a French version, the French page must link back to the English one. Right now, you have hreflang links that only go one direction—the receiving page does not link back to the original.
Why it costs you
Google treats one-way hreflang links as unreliable signals. When the receiving page does not confirm the relationship, Google may ignore the tags entirely and not show the right version to the right visitor. This means someone searching in France might see your English version instead of your French one, or vice versa, and leave your site because they cannot read it.
How to fix it
Fix this in your hreflang annotations. Every page that uses an hreflang tag to point to another version must itself contain an hreflang tag that points back. If you have a template or header file where these tags are generated, update it to create reciprocal links. Check each language or regional variant to ensure the hreflang tag includes all the other versions it should link to, and that each of those versions also includes an hreflang back to this one.
What the audit tests
- A page named as another language version links back to the page that named it
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