Is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” supported? To indicate alternate language pages
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Hey,
the README includes a mention of “Compatible with multi-lingual sites using Polylang or WPML to allow all languages to be indexed equally.” but does not go much into detail. I use polylang and have german and english content under mywebsite.org/de/… and mywebsite.org/en/…
Does the above mean that the following guidelines by Google are supported: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
Also I read a few times that a separate sitemap.xml should be submitted for each language. Then again I read that this is only true if each language has it’s own (sub)domain, e.g. de.mywebsite.org/… and enmywebsite.org/… instead of mywebsite.org/de/… and mywebsite.org/en/… What’s true? Does ‘XML Sitemap & Google News feeds’ handle this?
If you have any other considerations for using this plugin with Polylang let me know. I hope to get my hands dirty on this in a few days, but would better get the basics straigt before jumping into it.
Kind regards and Thank you!
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Hi, no the sitemap does not include ‘alternate’ tags as discussed on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
The compatibility goes as far as taking care to include all pages and posts from all languages. It leaves it up to the language plugin to add the appropriate language meta tags and ‘alternate’ language tags in the head of each page/post. Polylang does this just fine.
A separate sitemap for each language is not needed in most cases. In your case, with each language on a subdirectory (mywebsite.org/xx/) you don’t have to do anything. When you would like your languages on subdomains (xx.mywebsite.org) which is also possible with Polylang, then you will need to take some extra steps to allow all language versions in one single xml sitemap: 1. get all subdomains verified in google search console and 2. add all subdomains in the allowed domains list in the plugin settings.
I try to keep the plugin compatible with Polylang, so please let me know if you find any issues!
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