If you have multiple versions of a page for different languages or regions, then you have to inform search engines (i.e. Google) about these variations.
Even if you do not perform any action, Google may still manage to find the versions of your pages in alternate languages but it is best practice to explicitly declare what language your page is in and what other languages it is available in. Fortunately, Rank Math makes it extremely easy to optimize multilingual websites.
In this article, we’ll discuss why translated pages are not shown in your sitemaps:
Hreflang Tags
With the help of hreflang, you can keep all of your references in one place. However, this also means you have to update your sitemaps when you add translations or localizations.
With the help of hreflang tags, it becomes easier for Google to provide the correct language or region-specific page to the users. Hreflang tags also make it very clear to Google that one page is a translation of another. This ultimately helps to improve the rankings.
Rank Math lets the translation plugins handle the hreflang tag to the pages. Hence we do not add the translated pages to the Sitemap files which is one of the recommended methods to do so.
We hope that this knowledge base article has helped you to understand why & how we handle translated pages in sitemaps. However, if you have a specific question that you weren’t able to find the answer to – you’re always more than welcome to contact our dedicated support team. They are available 24/7, 365 days a year…