fusengine Hreflang / i18n SEO
Workflow
- Detect hreflang tags (HTML
<link>, HTTP header, or XML sitemap) - Run
scripts/parse-hreflang.ts→ validate - Check self-referencing, return tags, x-default
- Verify language/region codes (ISO 639-1 + ISO 3166-1)
Common Mistakes
- ❌ Missing self-reference (
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="/fr/">from/fr/) - ❌ Missing return tags (A → B but not B → A)
- ❌ Invalid codes (
en-UKinstead ofen-GB) - ❌ HTTP/HTTPS mismatch between alternates
- ❌ Mixing trailing slashes
Implementation Options
- HTML head:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://example.com/fr/"> - HTTP Header:
Link: <https://example.com/fr/>; rel="alternate"; hreflang="fr-FR" - XML Sitemap:
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://example.com/fr/"/>
x-default
Required for international landing/locale selector pages:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/">