It works for me:
/layout/theme.liquid
{% assign content_for_header = content_for_header | replace: 'hreflang="fr-FR"', 'hreflang="fr"' %}
{{ content_for_header }}
Topic summary
Issue: Shopify automatically generates hreflang tags with incorrect country codes (e.g., en-SE, de-SE instead of en, de-DE), causing SEO problems for multilingual stores.
Primary Solution: Users can modify the auto-generated tags by editing the theme.liquid file using Liquid code to replace incorrect values:
- Use
{% assign content_for_header = content_for_header | replace: 'hreflang="en-SE"', 'hreflang="en"' %}before outputting{{ content_for_header }} - Multiple replacements can be chained for different languages
Alternative Approach: Contact Shopify support to disable automatic hreflang generation, then manually add custom tags in the <head> section with conditional logic for different page templates (index, collection, product, etc.).
Key Considerations:
- Template detection syntax varies:
{% if template == "index" %}works for homepage, but other templates require{% if template.name == 'collection' %} - The replacement method preserves translated URL slugs better than full rewrites
- Sitemap.xml cannot be modified in Shopify; HTML implementation is the recommended solution
Unresolved: Creating hreflang-specific sitemaps remains challenging with no automated solution available. One user reported duplicate tags appearing when implementing corrections.