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Create A Multilingual Sitemap In WordPress

Do you want to boost the search engine rankings of your website’s multilingual pages?

Building a multilingual sitemap allows Google, Bing, and other search engines to easily identify and index your content. You may increase international search traffic simply by making it easier for search engines to find multilingual content on your WordPress site.

We’ll show you how to make a multilingual sitemap for WordPress in this article.

Why Make a WordPress Multilingual Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that contains all of your WordPress website’s vital information. It is in XML format and is intended for search engines rather than humans.

Building an XML sitemap for your multilingual website aids search engines in finding and indexing your content more quickly. For example, if you have many domains or subdomains that are translated into multiple languages, you’ll need to establish a sitemap for each one.

A sitemap is critical for your WordPress SEO. Assume you’ve just launched a new multilingual website. Your new site will have few backlinks, making it difficult for search engines to find your new articles and pages.

The sitemap allows search engines to learn about fresh information in another language. This will cause your multilingual pages to be indexed and displayed in search results.

Having stated that, let’s look at how to make a multilingual sitemap in WordPress.

Creating a WordPress multilingual sitemap

WordPress generates an XML sitemap for new websites by default. WordPress will display the default XML sitemap if you add wp-sitemap.xml to the end of the domain.

XML Multilingual sitemap sample

This feature, however, is quite limited and not very flexible. 

You have no say over what content is added or removed from the sitemap.

The All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin is the best approach to construct an XML sitemap in WordPress. 

It is the greatest WordPress SEO plugin for optimizing your website for search engines.

It also generates a sitemap for a bilingual website and allows you more flexibility over which pages and website parts appear in the sitemap.

The sitemap feature is offered for free in the AIOSEO Lite version. 

If you need extra functions, such as video sitemaps, news sitemaps, redirections manager, and link helper, we recommend the AIOSEO Pro edition.

You must first install and activate the AIOSEO plugin.

setup wizard

The AIOSEO setup wizard will appear after activation. Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the directions on the screen. For more information, see our article on how to install the All in One SEO plugin for WordPress.

Then, from your WordPress dashboard, navigate to All in One SEO » Sitemaps and confirm that the ‘Enable Sitemap’ option is activated.

Enable Sitemap

AIOSEO will generate a sitemap for your multilingual website instantly.

To preview it, click the ‘Open Sitemap’ button or just add ‘sitemap.xml’ to your website’s Address.

Open Sitemap

Please keep in mind that if you use WPML to construct multilingual sites, AIOSEO will automatically deliver sitemaps in many languages.

Your sitemap URL, for example, will be something like /nl/sitemap.xml, /de/sitemap.xml, or /fr/sitemap.xml.

If you use TranslatePress to develop your multilingual WordPress site, you must install their SEO pack extension, which is perfectly compatible with AIOSEO.

Extra Multilingual Sitemap Configuration

Scroll down in the AIOSEO Sitemaps settings to see more choices for further customizing your multilingual sitemaps.

The plugin allows you to include all article types and categories in the sitemap by default. It also lets you incorporate date archives and author sitemaps.

include all article types and categories

But, you can access more options by unchecking the ‘Post Types’ and ‘Taxonomies’ boxes.

Assume you have translated content set up as a custom post type. Simply check that box to include that post type in the sitemap while excluding other post kinds.

Post Types and Taxonomies boxes

You can also add additional pages from your multilingual website to the sitemap.

Assume you’ve translated a pillar article or evergreen content into another language. With AIOSEO, you can add the page URL to the sitemap and help search engines find your content more quickly.

To enable the option, scroll down and select the ‘Extra Page’ toggle. Following that, you can enter the page URL and set the priority and frequency.

Extra Page toggle

AIOSEO allows you to exclude specific articles, pages, and phrases from your WordPress sitemaps.

For example, you can include different multilingual posts and pages that are not included in the sitemap. These could be “contact us” pages or terms of service pages that have been translated into another language.

You must first enable the ‘Advanced Options’ option. Then, in the ‘Exclude Posts / Posts’ form, enter the URLs, and in the ‘Exclude Terms’ field, enter the terms.

Advance settings

Search Engine Submission of Your Multilingual Sitemap

After you’ve generated a multilingual sitemap, you should submit it to various search engines. Google, Bing, and other search engines can readily find new content this way.

Upload a Multilingual Sitemap to Google

Google Search Console is a free Google tool for monitoring your site’s performance in search results. It assists you in determining which keywords people use to locate your website and resolving any issues that may prevent you from appearing on Google.

Uploading your multilingual sitemap to the Search Console allows Google to discover new content more quickly.

Simply sign in to your account and select the ‘Sitemaps’ option from the menu on the left. Then, under the ‘Add a new sitemap’ option, enter your multilingual sitemap URL and click the ‘Submit’ button.

Google Multilingual sitemap submission

Multilingual Sitemap Submission to Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo

Similarly, you can use Webmaster Tools to submit the sitemap to Bing. The best thing is that when you submit your website to Bing, it is automatically submitted to Yahoo and DuckDuckGo.

Multilingual Sitemap Submission

By creating a multilingual sitemap for your WordPress site, you can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and increase your international reach. With our step-by-step guide, you can create a multilingual sitemap for your WordPress site and optimize it for search engines. By doing so, you can enhance the visibility of your multilingual pages and attract more traffic from around the world. Start boosting your website’s search engine rankings today with a multilingual sitemap!

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