name: international-seo
description: >
Validates hreflang tags, multi-language configuration, regional targeting, and
internationalisation best practices. Use when auditing sites with multiple languages,
regions, or localised content.
license: MIT
metadata:
author: Muhammad Ahsan Iqbal (https://muhammadahsaniqbal.com)
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahsan-iqbal-digitalmarketingexpert/
version: "1.0"
International SEO
Audit the page for multi-language and regional targeting issues.
When to activate: Only relevant if the site serves multiple languages, regions, or has localised content. If a page is monolingual with no internationalisation signals, report ✅ PASS "No internationalisation issues (single-language site)".
1. Hreflang tags
Look for <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> in <head>:
| Check | Status |
|---|
| No hreflang tags on a multi-language site | ❌ FAIL "Add hreflang tags to indicate language/region variants" |
| Hreflang tags present | ✅ PASS — list all language-region codes found |
Hreflang validation rules
| Rule | Violation = |
|---|
| Self-referencing hreflang missing (page must include itself) | ❌ FAIL |
x-default fallback missing | ⚠️ WARN "Add hreflang=\"x-default\" for the default/fallback page" |
Invalid language code (must be ISO 639-1, e.g. en, fr, de) | ❌ FAIL |
Invalid region code (must be ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, e.g. en-US, fr-CA) | ⚠️ WARN |
| Hreflang URLs return 4xx or 5xx | ❌ FAIL "Hreflang points to broken URL" |
| Duplicate hreflang entries for same language-region | ⚠️ WARN |
2. HTML lang attribute
| Check | Status |
|---|
<html lang="..."> missing | ❌ FAIL |
lang value doesn't match hreflang self-reference | ⚠️ WARN "Mismatch between html lang and hreflang" |
| Properly set | ✅ PASS |
3. Content-Language header (meta)
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="..."> → check if present- If present, verify it matches the
lang attribute → ⚠️ WARN if mismatch
4. URL structure for internationalisation
Detect URL pattern used:
| Pattern | Example | Assessment |
|---|
| Subdirectory | /en/, /fr/, /de/ | ✅ Recommended |
| Subdomain | en.example.com | ✅ Acceptable |
| ccTLD | example.fr, example.de | ✅ Strong geo-targeting |
| URL parameter | ?lang=en | ⚠️ WARN "Not recommended — search engines may ignore parameters" |
5. Translated content checks
| Check | Status |
|---|
Page has lang="en" but content appears in another language | ⚠️ WARN "Language mismatch detected" |
<title> and <meta description> not translated (same across language variants) | ⚠️ WARN |
| Images with alt text not translated | ⚠️ WARN |
6. Regional targeting
- Check for
<meta name="geo.region">, <meta name="geo.placename">, <meta name="geo.position"> → ✅ PASS if present
- Google Search Console geographic targeting hint: check for
<link rel="canonical"> pointing to regional variant
Edge cases
- A monolingual site with no internationalisation signals → skip all checks, report "Not applicable"
- A site with
hreflang on some pages but not others → flag inconsistency
- Right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew) → check for
dir="rtl" attribute on <html> or <body>