hreflang is one of the most commonly misconfigured technical elements in international ecommerce, and it's also one of the most misunderstood. Here's what it actually does, in plain terms.
What hreflang actually is
hreflang is a signal that tells search engines which version of a page to show to which audience, based on language and region together. It's not about translation itself, it's about routing the right version of your content to the right market.
Why this is different from just translating your site
You can have a perfectly translated French page that still shows up in the wrong market, or competes with your English page in search results, if hreflang isn't correctly implemented. Translation addresses the content. hreflang addresses which version search engines should actually surface.
The most common mistake
Missing or incorrect hreflang tags commonly cause the wrong regional or language version of a page to rank in a given market, which can undermine an entire international strategy without any obvious symptom pointing directly to the cause. It often looks like a general ranking problem rather than a specific technical misconfiguration.
URL structure choices
Subdirectories, subdomains, and country-code top-level domains are all valid approaches, each with different implications for how authority is shared across markets and how much separate work each market requires. There's a genuinely correct choice for a given business, but it depends on your specific situation, not a universal rule.
Don't forget genuine market-specific research
A direct translation, however accurate, doesn't always reflect how people in that specific market actually search. Genuine keyword research for each target market, not just translated versions of your home-market terms, makes a real difference.