Hreflang: Not Using Canonical

URLs not using the canonical URL on the page in its own hreflang annotation. Hreflang should only include canonical versions of URLs.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

View URLs with this issue in the ‘Hreflang’ tab and ‘Not Using Canonical’, filter and export all URLs using the ‘Export’ button.

Read our tutorial on ‘How To Audit Hreflang’.

What Triggers This Issue

This issue arises when hreflang annotations on a page do not reference the page’s own canonical URL.

For example:

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

Has the hreflang annotation:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.screamingfrog.com/technical-seo/" />

But has the following canonical link element:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.screamingfrog.com/technical-seo-consultancy/" />

How To Fix

Update hreflang annotations to include canonical versions of URLs only. They should not include links which are canonicalised to other URLs.