How to add correct hreflang for google like "en-gb" instead of "en_GB"

Question

I have multiple store site in magento. i wanted to add hreflang for my stores and thanks to one of the post here i have managed to do so.

the code i wrote in my

app / design / frontend / mytheme / default / template / page / html / head.phtml

and the code it self is

    $website = Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getStores();
foreach ( $website as $store) {
    $lang = $store->getConfig('general/locale/code');
    echo '<link rel="alternate" href="' . preg_replace('/\?.*/', '', $store->getCurrentUrl()) . '" hreflang="' . $lang . '"/>' . "\n";
}

and the result i am getting on front end is

<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/en/" hreflang="en_GB"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/fr/" hreflang="fr_FR"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/de/" hreflang="de_DE"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/it/" hreflang="it_IT"/>

but the issue is, as you know hreflang="en_GB" is incorrect and google wont recognize it. the tag should be hreflang="en-gb" dash - instead of _ and all lower caps. how to achieve this? and 2nd is it important to have URL parameter /en/ for English site? cant this be without /en/? if so then how to achieve this? rest EU sites are fine to have parameters but English store should be with out it. Thanks

Answer 1

I'd recommend keeping the /en/ in the url, because it will help search engines index the correct language pages.

To convert the string en_GB to en-gb, you can use the following:

strtolower(str_replace('_','-',$lang));

Hope this helps!

EDIT:

In the example code shown in the question, please modify the following line:

$lang = $store->getConfig('general/locale/code');

into:

$lang = strtolower(str_replace('_','-',$store->getConfig('general/locale/code')));

Answer 2

I Found the solution. this is the full code:

$website = Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getStores();
foreach ( $website as $store) {
    $lang = $store->getConfig('general/locale/code');
if (strtolower($lang) == 'en_gb'){
        $lang = 'en-gb'; 
    }
if (strtolower($lang) == 'fr_fr'){
        $lang = 'fr-fr';
    }
if (strtolower($lang) == 'de_de'){
        $lang = 'de-de'; 
    }
if (strtolower($lang) == 'it_it'){
        $lang = 'it-it';
    }
    echo '<link rel="alternate" href="' . preg_replace('/\?.*/', '', $store->getCurrentUrl()) . '" hreflang="' . $lang . '"/>' . "\n";
}

and i pasted this in file:

httpdocs / app / design / frontend / mytemplate / default / template / page / html / head.phtml

and now the results are:

<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/en/" hreflang="en-gb"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/fr/" hreflang="fr-fr"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/de/" hreflang="de-de"/>
<link rel="alternate" href="http://www.mysite.co.uk/it/" hreflang="it-it"/>

Hope this will help some one.