XML Sitemaps - Multi-lingual website
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am working with a large website that has some of its content translated across multiple languages. I am planning on using The Media Flow to create an HREFLANG Sitemap for content on various languages. Please see the attached image for the questions below. Thanks!
Section Highlighted Yellow:
- When there is a URL that does not have a translated version, should it not be included on the same HREFLANG sitemap?
- Alternately, could I just remove the languages that are not being targeted, so this would just reflect English language targeting?
-
Thank you Martign! That makes sense. I'm excited to see how using the HREFLANG markup helps with multi-lingual users.
-
Hi,
- You can always include it in the same sitemap, that won't matter for the markup of a sitemap. A normal sitemap is just expecting a list of URLs and the REL altnerates for translated pages are just an extension. However I would advise not include them in the same sitemap but create an alternative one for this and only include translated URLs into this one. By doing this you can measure the indexation rate of translated articles v.s. non translated articles.
- Sure, you only include the languages that you've translated your articles too.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best Sitemap for Large Website
i have more than 3500 pages on my website. Please let me know the best sitemap plugin for my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard1 -
Some sitemap xml apprears in google search
some sitemap, i have observed, that google is showing in the result for our website.. wht is wrong? any idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Do you get links from new websites?
There's a new industry specific website that looks decent. It's clean and nothing spammy. However, it's so new it's DA is under 10. Is it worth pursuing a link from a site like this? On one hand, there's nothing spammy and it is industry specific. On the other...it's just DA is so terrible (worse than any of our other links), I don't want it to hurt us. Any thoughts? Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
100% links within the website - could it rank?
Hi, If I create blog posts inside my website and link it back to my website, Would it still rank? I understand that its better to get links from the established domain. But I just wonder what kind of impact would my site have if the blog posts within my site link back to itself for ranking. Please let me know. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zsyed0 -
XML Sitemaps - how to create the perfect XML Sitemap
Hello, We have a site that is not updated very often - currently we have a script running to create/update the XML sitemap every time a page is added/edited or deleted. I have a few questions about best practices for creating XML sitemaps. 1. If the site is not updated for months on end - is it a bad idea to force the script to update i.e. changing the dates once a month? Will google noticed nothing has changed just the date i.e. all the content on the site is exactly the same. Will they start penalising you for updating an XML sitemap when there is nothing new about the website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK
2. Is it worth automating the XML file to link into Bing/Google to update via webmaster tools - as I say even if the site is never updated?
3. Is the use of "priorities" necessary?
4. The changefreq - does that mean Google/Bing expects to see a new file ever month?
5. The ordering of the pages - the script seems pretty random and put the pages in a random order - should we make it order the pages with the most important ones first? Should the home page always be first?
6. Below is a sample of how our XML sitemap appears - is there anything that we should change? i.e. all marked up properly? This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><url><loc>http://www.domain.com</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/contact/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url>
<url><loc>http://www.domain.com/sitemap/</loc>
<lastmod>2013-11-06</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq></url></urlset> Hope someone can help enlighten us to best practices0 -
302 redirects in the sitemap?
My website uses a prefix at the end to instruct the back-end about visitor details. The setup is similar to this site - http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=sf with a 302 redirect from the normal link to the one with additional info and a canonical tag on the actual URL without the extra info ((the normal one here being http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com,) However, when I used www.xml-sitemaps.com to create a sitemap they did so using the URLs with the extra info on the links... what should I do to create a sitemap using the normal URLs (which are the ones I want to be promoting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Ajax website and SEO
Hi all, A client of mine has a website similar to Pintrest. All in Ajax/. So imagine an ajax-grid based animal lover site called domain.com. The domain has three different Categories Cats, Dogs, Mice. When you click on a category, the site doesn't handle the URL and doesn't change the domain So instead of the domain going from domain.com to domain.com/cats, it uses the Ajax script and just shows all the cat pins. and when you click on each pin/post it opens a page such as domain.com/Pin/123/PostTitle It doesn't reference the category. However a page domain.com/cats does exist and you can go there directly. Is this an SEO issue for not grouping all pins under a category? How does Google handle Ajax these days, it use to be real bad but if Pintrest is going so well i'm assuming times have changed? Any other things to be wary of for a grid based/ajax site? I am happy to pay for an hour or two for a more in depth audit/tips if you can feed back on the above. Fairly urgent. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero1 -
How to gain more conversions through my website
Hello, I have a wealth coaching website bobweikel(dot)com Will you look at it and tell me how I can improve traffic and conversions. I want to gain several clients a week just from the web. Possible areas of help: On-site SEO & keywords link building: I don't see how to link build here Content Creation Adwords Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0