Example output: examples/seo-hreflang-airbnb-com-20260514/HREFLANG-REPORT.md

Hreflang Audit

Adapted from AgriciDaniel/claude-seo's seo-hreflang skill (MIT). Concept and validation rules originate there; this implementation is rebuilt against our backend (SE Ranking MCP + Firecrawl + WebFetch + Google APIs via seo-google).

Validate hreflang implementations on a multi-language or multi-region site. Surface SE Ranking audit-level hreflang issues, parse a sample of pages for the actual <link rel="alternate" hreflang="…"> tags they emit, cross-check the sitemap, and produce one of three verdicts — PASS, NEEDS-FIX, or BROKEN — with a top-fixes table anchored in objective signals.

Prerequisites

SE Ranking MCP server connected.
Claude's WebFetch tool available (fallback when Firecrawl is unavailable).
User provides: a target domain (e.g. example.com). Optional: explicit list of representative pages to inventory; explicit sitemap URL if not at /sitemap.xml.
Predecessor (recommended): seo-technical-audit or seo-sitemap already run on this domain. Without an existing audit, the skill creates one (which costs significantly more credits).

Process

Validate target & preflight. See skills/seo-firecrawl/references/preflight.md for the canonical 3-stage preflight (credit balance, Firecrawl availability, Google APIs). Skill-specific notes:
- Normalise domain (strip protocol, trailing slash) before continuing.
- Estimated SE Ranking cost for this skill: ~5–10 SE Ranking credits for re-using an existing audit (up to ~3 Firecrawl credits for the per-URL inventory).
- Firecrawl: optional with WebFetch fallback, ~6 Firecrawl credits if available (hard cap). When available, step 4 (per-URL hreflang inventory) runs on homepage + 5 representative pages with formats: ["rawHtml"]. Without Firecrawl, step 4 falls back to WebFetch — coverage is degraded because WebFetch returns markdown only and silently strips <link rel="alternate"> tags from <head>. Pass --no-firecrawl to force WebFetch even when Firecrawl is available.
- Google APIs: tier 1 (GSC) unlocks step 6 (GSC verification of hreflang-targeted alternates). See skills/seo-google/references/cross-skill-integration.md for the full enrichment contract.
Find or refresh the audit DATA_listAudits → DATA_getAuditStatus
- List audits for the domain. If a recent audit exists (<30 days), use it.
- If older than 30 days, run DATA_recheckAudit and wait for done.
- If none exists, ask the user before creating one with DATA_createStandardAudit — it consumes credits.
Pull SE Ranking's hreflang findings DATA_getAuditReport + DATA_getAuditPagesByIssue
- SE Ranking's audit catches hreflang errors directly — surface them first as ground truth.
- From DATA_getAuditReport, extract every issue with code or category matching hreflang (typical codes: hreflang_no_return_tag, hreflang_invalid_lang_code, hreflang_conflict, hreflang_missing_x_default, hreflang_canonical_mismatch, hreflang_no_self_reference).
- For each significant hreflang issue (count ≥ 1), call DATA_getAuditPagesByIssue to enumerate the affected URLs.
- Persist to 01-audit-hreflang-issues.md and feed into hreflang-issues.csv.
Per-URL hreflang tag inventory mcp__firecrawl-mcp__firecrawl_scrape (preferred) / WebFetch (fallback)
- Sample selection: homepage + up to 5 representative pages from DATA_getDomainPages (sort by traffic descending; bias toward pages on different language paths if the URL structure exposes them — /en/, /fr/, /de/, etc.).
- Firecrawl path (1 credit per URL, ~6 total): call firecrawl_scrape(url=..., formats=["rawHtml"]). Pin rawHtml — the default html post-processing strips <link rel="alternate"> on many sites. Parse every <link rel="alternate" hreflang="…" href="…"> from the <head>. Capture: source URL, hreflang attribute, href, and whether it's self-referencing.
- WebFetch fallback (no Firecrawl): try fetching each URL and extracting hreflang from the markdown response. WebFetch frequently returns markdown that has stripped <head> link tags, so this path will under-report. Note in HREFLANG-REPORT.md: Per-URL inventory: degraded coverage — Firecrawl not installed; some hreflang tags may be missed.
- Apply validation rules (see references/validation-rules.md for the full list):
  - Self-referencing tag: the page's own URL must appear in its own hreflang set.
  - Return tags: every alternate link must reciprocate. If page A lists B as fr, page B must list A as en (or whichever).
  - x-default: at least one alternate per set must use hreflang="x-default".
  - Language-region code validation: every value must be a valid ISO 639-1 language (optionally followed by - and an ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 region). Common errors caught: eng (use en), jp (use ja), en-uk (use en-GB), es-LA (no such ISO region).
  - Conflict detection: the same hreflang value (e.g. de-DE) appearing on multiple distinct URLs is a conflict — Google ignores conflicting sets.
  - Canonical alignment: if the page has <link rel="canonical">, it must match the page's own URL (or its self-referencing hreflang URL). Hreflang on a non-canonical page is silently ignored by Google.
  - Protocol consistency: all URLs in a set must share the same scheme (HTTPS preferred).
- Persist to 02-per-url-hreflang.md and append findings to hreflang-issues.csv.
Sitemap-level hreflang (defer to seo-sitemap where appropriate)
- If the user's domain uses sitemap-based hreflang (<xhtml:link rel="alternate" …> inside the sitemap), this skill checks structure and consistency only. Full sitemap analysis (orphans, missing pages, broken entries) is seo-sitemap's job — recommend it explicitly if a sitemap-vs-audit diff is in scope.
- Fetch the sitemap. Try https://{domain}/sitemap.xml; if 404, fetch /robots.txt and find Sitemap: directives. For sitemap-of-sitemaps, recursively fetch each child.
- Validate hreflang within the sitemap:
  - Does the sitemap use the xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" namespace? Required for hreflang in sitemaps.
  - Does each <url> entry that has hreflang alternates include itself in the alternate set (self-reference)?
  - Does every alternate listed in one <url> entry reciprocate as its own <url> entry with the same alternate set (return tags)?
  - Are language-region codes valid (apply same rules as step 4)?
- Cross-check against per-URL inventory (step 4): if a sample URL's HTML lists 4 hreflang alternates but the sitemap entry for that URL lists 6, that mismatch is a conflict — Google may pick either, and inconsistency degrades the signal.
- Persist to 03-sitemap-hreflang.md and append findings to hreflang-issues.csv.
GSC verification of hreflang-targeted alternates (only if google-api.json is present, tier ≥ 1)
- For each unique domain that appears as an href target in the hreflang sets (e.g. example.com, example.de, example.fr), confirm GSC verification: python3 scripts/gsc_query.py --property "{property}" --json (a status-only check; just confirm the property responds without PROPERTY_NOT_VERIFIED).
- Why this matters: Google explicitly recommends verifying every domain that participates in a cross-domain hreflang setup. If example.de is listed as an alternate but isn't verified in this account, the hreflang signal is weakened and you can't see how Google interprets it.
- Surface in HREFLANG-REPORT.md as a section "## GSC verification of hreflang targets" with one row per target domain: verified / not verified / not configured.
- If property not verified for a target domain: list it as a fix at

seo-hreflang

How to add

Drop this on your repo README

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Hreflang Audit

Prerequisites

Process

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