Meanwhile, we changed our WPML setup. All URL’s are currently listed in one sitemap.
A lot of our issues with regards to WPML relate to their feature “Browser language redirect”:
1. People have to switch language twice for it to stick
2. WPML’s root page doesn’t redirect and we couldn’t get that working
3. Language redirect prevents the 404 status code so we can’t remove pages from Google’s index
4. Languages different than the WPML default language are not indexed by Google (as Googlebot is redirected to the default language which was English in our case, Googlebot concludes the other pages do not exist).
Google states “Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site.”
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
Auto redirection (on IP or accept language) is actually listed in this post about 3 Most Common Mistakes in Multilingual Ecommerce SEO:
https://www.certifiedtranslationservices.co.uk/blog/2016/02/3-most-common-mistakes-in-multilingual-ecommerce-seo/
So we set WPML to “Disable browser language redirect”. Instead, our visitors can now switch to another language using the WordPress menu bar. We currently have two languages so and implemented a flag in the WordPress menu bar. Via functions.php custom code as the options provided by WPML always resulted in an expanded drop down menu.
We also disabled “Use directory for default language” (a feature we enabled for consistency so all languages would have a folder in their url). This results in the homepage url not being indexed (because it’s redirected). If you want to use a directory for the default language, you’d have to deal with an extra root homepage.
