Do I have to create a separate sitemap for my multilingual site?

[ReneAnton]

Hi,

I was wondering how should I implement a sitemap for my multilingual site. Currently we have two languanges separated by subdirectories in our site /en (english) and /fr (french) however based on the the articles that I have read there are no clear explanation on the implementation of the sitemap with different languanges. Here are the cases I think is possible for the implementation:

Case 1: One sitemap with all the en and fr pages together with hreflang attribution for each pages

Case 2: One sitemap with only en pages with hreflang attribution for both languages (en and fr)

Case 3: Separate sitemap for en and fr pages with hreflang attribution for both languanges and connect both through sitemapindex creation.

If any of my proposed cases are not possible please let me know the best approach in creating a multilingual sitemap for my site. Appreciate your thoughts regarding this. Thank you!

[ReneAnton]

Thanks a lot Martin, will keep that in mind.

[benesmartin]

Hello, from my experience, I'd recommend the case 3. It is quite usual that the sitemaps are divided by categories, topics of articles, months etc. so you can actually divide the sitemap by language as well. It's actually a good idea to have multiple shorter sitemaps for keeping them updated and easier to manage.