Hreflang validation for multilingual sites.

International SEO

Hreflang tags tell search engines which language and regional version of a page to show to users in different locations. Incorrect hreflang implementation is one of the most common and confusing technical SEO issues — missing self-references, broken return links, invalid language codes, and missing x-default tags can cause the wrong language version to appear in search results. EchoBat validates the entire hreflang chain across your site.

How It Works

EchoBat's crawler extracts hreflang tags from HTML link elements and HTTP headers on every page. The Hreflang Health lens then builds a complete language map across the site: it validates self-references, checks bidirectional return links (if /en/ points to /fr/, /fr/ must point back to /en/), validates language and region codes against ISO standards, and flags missing x-default tags.

Proof Returned in the Report

Every International SEO finding is tied to crawl evidence: affected URLs, the source signal, severity, score impact, and the next action exposed in the portal, CLI JSON, and MCP tools.

Sample Evidence Fields

  • Self-Referencing Tags: Every page with hreflang must include a self-referencing tag pointing to its own URL.
  • x-default Fallback: Checks for x-default hreflang tag that catches users not matching any specified language.
  • Return Link Validation: If page A has hreflang pointing to page B, page B must point back to page A.

Why It Matters

  • Catch hreflang errors that cause wrong language versions to rank
  • Validate bidirectional return links across all language versions
  • Ensure proper x-default fallback for unmatched regions
  • Site-wide validation, not one page at a time

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