Hreflang: Self Reference Only

URLs that have a single self-referencing hreflang annotation. Hreflang can be used if you have multiple versions of a page in different languages or regions to tell Google about the different variations.

Therefore, there should be at least one other alternate version of the page that is included in the hreflang that confirms the relationship.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

View URLs with this issue in the ‘Hreflang’ tab and ‘Self Reference Only’ 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 just have a single self-referencing rel=”alternate” hreflang annotation.

For example:

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

Has the following hreflang annotation only:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/technical-seo/" />

Without annotations for other regional variants.

How To Fix

Update hreflang annotations to include alternate versions of the page to ensure it’s valid.

If there isn’t an alternative version, then the single self-referencing hreflang annotation can be removed as it won’t help with targeting the page.