Hreflang: Mismatch with HTML Lang Attribute

URLs with an hreflang annotation that does not match the declared HTML lang attribute on the page. This mismatch suggests that either the hreflang values or the HTML lang attribute are incorrect.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

View URLs with this issue in the ‘Hreflang’ tab and ‘Mismatch with HTML Lang Attribute’ filter, and export all URLs using the ‘Export’ button.

Read our tutorial on ‘How To Audit Hreflang’.

What Triggers This Issue

This issue is triggered when URLs have an rel=”alternate” hreflang annotation that does not match the HTML lang attribute on the page.

For example:

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/technical-seo/

Has the following hreflang annotation and HTML lang attribute:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de-de" href="https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/technical-seo/" />
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb">


The language tag is saying the content is English, while the hreflang annotation is saying it’s German.

How To Fix

Review the mismatch between the hreflang annotation and HTML lang attribute on the page, and update the values so they are accurate for users and search engines.