A critical hreflang mistake that costs you thousands of dollars!
Intro
One of the first lessons you quickly learn in eCommerce SEO is that you must always keep an eye on your competitors. And guess what? Your competitors are also smart! So be prepared for minor strategic moves—or, in this case, a major one.
I’ve come across this mistake so often that I decided it's time to take action and share my insights with you.
hreflangs are exposing
Hreflangs are primarily meant for search engines, but many of us use browser plugins to check competitors' homepages and see which other markets they are targeting. In simple terms, hreflang tags quickly reveal your country coverage.
In some cases, I’ve discovered that certain browser plugins indicate missing back-references. This is usually a minor issue that can be easily fixed. However, sometimes SEOs use hreflangs to prepare for future market launches. They add a domain to the hreflang setup weeks before the shop officially goes live.
That’s great for planning, but there's a critical mistake many make:
REGISTER THE DOMAIN BEFORE EXPOSING IT IN hreflang!
If you don’t, you risk someone else—like a competitor or an opportunist—snatching up the domain before you do.
So what?
If you haven't registered the domains listed in your hreflang tags, someone else can. And if they do, your brand’s expansion plans are now in serious trouble.
Imagine a scenario like this with Amazon:
amazon.de (registered and running)
amazon.nl (registered and running)
amazon.it (registered and running)
amazon.pl (exposed in hreflang but not registered by Amazon)
amazon.at (exposed in hreflang but not registered by Amazon)
Now, if I see this, I can quickly check if those domains are available. If they are, I can register them—and now, Amazon has a big problem. Instead of launching amazon.pl, they might be forced to use an inconsistent alternative like amazon-shop.pl or amazon-whatever.at. That’s a branding nightmare and a costly mistake to fix.
Greetings to my competitor
As you can see in the screenshot, four domains were not back-referencing, and three of them were unregistered. Well, guess what? I’m the new owner now.
If you want them back, feel free to get in touch—or start brainstorming new domain names. 😏
Final Thought: Always secure your domains before exposing them in hreflang tags!