- Class
- C1 Mechanism
- Weight
- 8
- Severity on fail
- critical
- Applies to
Test this rule on a live site with the hreflang checker. Free, no account needed.
Scope and evidence
Evaluated on pages in P with hreflang link elements. The book marks this requirement REQUIRED (via SEO-HEAD-05).
{culprit_clause} as in SEO-CANON-01.
Fail conditions
Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.
outside_head{n} hreflang links on {url} are in <body>{culprit_clause}. Google requires these <link> tags to be inside a well-formed <head> section.
The documented fix
Emit hreflang links in the server-rendered head and fix any SEO-HEAD-05 culprit.
Sources, quoted
These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.
“The <link> tags must be inside a well-formed <head> section of the HTML.”
[G-HREFLANG] Tell Google about localized versions of your page · HTML tags · last updated 2026-09-21
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions
Related rules
- SEO-HEAD-05The head is not closed early