And John said keep JavaScript out of your head section. Yes, Google can handle broken HTML - I mean, most of the HTML on the web is probably not even close to 100% valid. So Google has to handle it.

John Mueller from Google advises placing JavaScript code underneath the HTML element to ensure that search engines can clearly understand your website.

Google's John Mueller said in a Google Hangout on Google+ last Friday that sometimes when href lang doesn't get picked up, it might be that the header section of your HTML is broken. When that ...