Hreflang is an annotation that tells Google which language or regional versions of a page exist, so it can show each searcher the most suitable one. A UAE business with English and Arabic versions of its service pages uses hreflang to tell Google the pages are translations of each other, and which audience each one is for.
Some hreflang codes look right and do nothing. Google’s hreflang documentation says region codes must follow the ISO 3166-1 standard, and that codes reserved for other uses, such as EU, UN or UK, are ignored. A page tagged en-UK isn’t targeting Britain at all. The correct code is en-GB. A country code can’t stand alone either: ae by itself isn’t the UAE, because the first code must always be a language.
How hreflang works
Each value starts with a language code and can add a region code after a dash. en means English for any region. ar-AE means Arabic for users in the UAE. Google accepts upper or lower case, though region codes are conventionally written in capitals.
| Code | Meaning | Valid? |
|---|---|---|
en-AE |
English for users in the UAE | Yes |
ar-AE |
Arabic for users in the UAE | Yes |
ar |
Arabic for any region, a useful catch-all across the GCC | Yes |
x-default |
The fallback page for anyone whose language isn’t matched | Yes |
en-UK |
Intended for Britain, but UK is a reserved code | No, ignored |
ae |
A region with no language | No |
You can declare hreflang in three ways: link elements in each page’s head, HTTP headers (useful for PDFs), or your XML sitemap. Google says the three are equivalent, and using more than one brings no benefit and is harder to maintain. Pick one.
Google’s rules
- Every version lists itself as well as every other version.
- The links must go both ways. If two pages don’t point to each other, Google ignores the tags.
- URLs must be complete, including https.
- Google doesn’t use hreflang to work out what language a page is in. It detects language itself and uses hreflang to understand that pages are versions of each other.
- Translated pages aren’t duplicates. Google only treats localised versions as duplicates if the main content stays untranslated.
- Each version’s canonical tag should point to a page in the same language, never from the Arabic page to the English one.
On a large site where keeping every pair linked is hard, Google says the priority is linking new language versions back to your main language.
Hreflang on bilingual B2B sites
As the internal SEO lead at GoCo, a Canadian telecom and managed network provider, I ran SEO across English (en-CA) and French (fr-CA) versions of the site. Over 17 site enhancements in 2020 and 2021, organic traffic grew 94% across both language versions. The hreflang set-up mattered, but content parity mattered as much. Every English page had a complete French equivalent, so each hreflang pair pointed to a real translation rather than a thin placeholder.
For UAE and GCC sites, the same principle applies to English and Arabic. Hreflang can only connect pages that exist. A half-translated Arabic section undermines it more than any tagging error.
Common mistakes
- Missing return links, the most common error Google lists.
- Using
en-UK, a region code alone, or other invalid codes. - Pointing hreflang at URLs that redirect or aren’t canonical.
- Declaring hreflang in two or three places that contradict each other.
- Relying on subdomain or folder names such as /ar/ to signal the audience. Google says it doesn’t use them for that.
Related terms
Canonical tag · XML sitemap · Redirect chain · On-page SEO
