SEO and WPML and X-theme

Hi @petrp,

I’m not sure which multilingual plugin you’re using, but if you’re using qTranslate X, WPML or Polylang the following are accounted for (see “a)”):

a) Please see this issue for details. There it is explained that the multilingual helper plugins should resolve this through hreflang meta tags automatically.

b) Don’t worry about priority. It’s only used for primary indexation. After that, the lastmod (Last Updated) tag takes over. There’s no way to change this. For more information, please visit this issue, where I explained both the limitations and capabilities.

If you are still having issues getting indexed, you should sign up for Google Search Console. Through the SEO Settings’ Webmaster meta box you can connect the console to your site. With that, you are able to find out more information regarding indexation of your website. Please note that it takes about 3 days to aggregate useful data.

I hope this helps, best of luck!

Hi Sybre,

thanks for your feedback. We use WPML (it’s in the topic title ?? and will study your link. We didn’t have this problem with any of the other sites we built, so we thought it’s related to the specific theme.
Best regards,
PP

Hi @petrp,

Whoops, I overlooked the title ??

It’s difficult to determine if everything’s OK from a distance.

If you believe everything’s OK according to the specifications from the links of my previous reply, do let me know!
Alternatively, if you’d like me to take a closer look then feel free to share your URL(s for comparison) right here or confidentially on my contact page.

Hi Sybre,

thanks for your kind help!
Well we still didn’t succeed yet in bringing any non-English result in google (we even dropped a spot in Eng results here and there after switching)
Will still make some efforts but else I’ll send you on Monday more info via your contact page.
Thanks a lot!
PP

Hi, just my 2 cents to the conversation – after introducing new translation to website, mine SERP positions dropped too, only to return to the same positions after several weeks. Happened to me twice, although once with other SEO plugin, langs cs, en.

Hi Sybre,
coming back to this topic, it’s still not solved and we tried a lot of things. WPML also tried to help but to no avail.
Now what i found as possible culprit in The SEO framework: the sitemap is outputting the urls to the non-English pages wrongly. Example:
original ENG url is /realisations/
What Yoast does and what is actually the correct url:
/realisaties/?lang=nl
What SEO framework does:
/realisations/?lang=nl It doesn’t take the translated slug in the url.

And the second issue that i found (not in your plugin, but i couldn’t find the solution for your plugin to this problem) :
a server setting which we can’t fix right now, obstructed the earlier Yoast plugin to read the sitemap via the usual sitemap xml url. Yoast had the solution in faq that we had to add to htaccess the following:
# Yoast SEO – XML Sitemap Rewrite Fix
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L]
RewriteRule ^locations.kml$ /index.php?sitemap=wpseo_local_kml [L]
RewriteRule ^geo_sitemap.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=geo [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)?-?sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 [L]
# END Yoast SEO – XML Sitemap Rewrite Fix

this fixed the problem.
Now, i couldn’t even find this problem in the first place using SEO framework, but i didnt know about this problem either when using Yoast.
So, are you aware of perhaps a similar issue with SEO framework, and is there some similar solution for that?

If none of those two issues are the reason of non-indexing of the non-default language page of the sites, than i really don’t know anymore, and so doesn’t wpml. I hope you have some good news ??

Thanks a lot!

Hi @petrp,

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find your contact page submission. So I’m having a rough time figuring out what’s the issue.

This is what I can tell:

1. NGINX Sitemap rewrites
The Yoast rules can be omitted, and should be exchanged with what I commented here:
https://github.com/EasyEngine/easyengine/issues/601#issuecomment-298459502

With that, your server supports everything WordPress can offer through its rewrite system.

2. Mixing queries and directories
Now, I didn’t help write WPML, but in your examples, I see the mixed part:

Default WPML (OK):
/en/realizations/         => /nl/realizations/ 
   /realizations/?lang=en =>    /realizations/?lang=nl

Mixed WPML (Impossible?):
   /realizations/?lang=en =>    /realisaties /?lang=nl
/en/realizations/?lang=en => /nl/realisaties /?lang=nl
/en/realizations/?lang=en => /nl/realizations/?lang=nl

Mixed WPML + WordPress slug (OK):
   /realizations/?lang=en =>    /realisaties /?lang=nl
/en/realizations/         => /nl/realisaties/ 

If I’m not mistaken, mixed support isn’t natively possible.

WordPress should provide the correct slug, whereas WPML would add either the query string, subdomain or subdirectory.
If that’s happening, then you’re fine.

Yoast SEO provides its own rewrite system, that theoretically could make them cooperate to achieve this. But that’s a feature I will never provide.
Alternatively, WPML could’ve added extra support for Yoast to support that combination. But I couldn’t find this provided out-of-the-box within their API.

3. Indexing issue
If you’re requiring the mixed system, it could be that your other sites are having a hard time indexing because The SEO Framework will naturally omit them as it tries to prevent canonical mistakes.

In any case, I really do need your website’s URL to confirm any of the issues. Could you submit it once more? Thanks!

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: more details
• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: Tested plugin conflicts. There were none. Removed comments on that

Hi Sybre,
I just wrote you via your contact page with the url.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with mixed/not mixed issue, as it’s not indexing with either Framework or Yoast, while nothing has been edited that’s not wpml native setup.
Thank you very much!
PP

Hi @petrp,

Thanks for sharing the URL. I looked into it, and you shouldn’t be concerned about the output. The reason why is explained in the link further below.

Regardless, I’ve escalated this topic towards a GitHub issue, bug reports on these forums tend to get lost into the darkness.

You can find it here:
https://github.com/sybrew/the-seo-framework/issues/173

Cheers!

Hi Sybre,

thanks for looking into it, and glad i could point you towards that little bug.

However, this still didn’t solve the issue why the pages in non-default language aren’t being indexed by google, I’m afraid. I’m running out of options..

Kind regards,
PP

Hi @petrp,

My mistake, I forgot to follow up on that one.

First, could you try this solution:

WPML -> Languages -> Scroll down to Browser language redirect -> Check the Disable browser language redirect option and save.

Then, ask Google to completely recrawl your website, hit “Fetch and Render” here. Wait for a little, and hit the “Request indexing” button in the Status fields.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/googlebot-fetch

Also, you can do this 500 times a month; so, try submitting the query parameters too, e.g.:

Hi Sybre,
this has been done long time already (WPML experts previously also tried everything they could)
And recrawling and fetching has been done like 30 times by now as well ??
Nothing helps….

Thanks for your effort, much appreciated!

Hi @petrp,

I now see 9 to 14 URLs indexed. So I believe Google is currently indexing your website.

Try this Google search, where example.com is your website’s domain:

inurl:"?lang=" site:https://www.example.com/

If the above number doesn’t increase over the week, then we still have work to do. ??

hi Sybre!
not really, this 9 to 14 situation remained unchanged for a longer time already, nothing improved since a while.
The webmaster tool tells me 2 of 289 pages indexed, while earlier with the yoast plugin/sitemap it said *almost* all pages were indexed – though yet with same *no* results in google…
PS i see in those few google results that the slug is also here in English, even if it refers to another language version (that little bug we talked earlier about)

Any ideas what to try as next step? Should i perhaps try submit a self-made sitemap with correct slugs? (though i dont expect changes in results)

Cheers!

Hi @petrp,

Bummer! I see no increase either.

I tried some common testing tools, i.e. what’s listed here, and I see no issues in how those tools perceive your webpages.

It might be useful to add a widget in the footer that directly links to the alternative languages of the current page.

Sequentially, and this is a big one, I suggest using subdomains (or subdirectories), instead of query parameters.
I’m certain the final suggestion will work, but it requires a lot of attention to detail (i.e. inspecting all URLs). Luckily, as the other languages aren’t indexed already, this will not yield any negative impact.