hreflang

hreflang is an HTML attribute (used in <link> tags and HTTP headers) that tells search engines which language and optionally which regional variant a page targets. Required for sites with multiple language versions; ignored by browsers but essential for SEO.

Value format: a BCP 47 language tag — en, tr, en-GB, en-US, x-default (the fallback for unmatched locales). Each language version of a page should include hreflang tags pointing to every other version, including itself.

Example for a Turkish + English page pair:

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

Without hreflang, Google may surface the wrong language version to users in a given region. With it, the right version goes to the right reader. Convertitive’s i18n roadmap (Wave 4) involves wiring hreflang across every translated page.