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Yoast SEO Multilingual – Optimize Sites with WPML

Tomer Helzer
Updated
February 11, 2025

Learn how to translate Yoast SEO meta information into more languages and optimize your site for multilingual SEO.

Translate On-Page SEO Elements

Translate titles, meta descriptions, URL slugs, and more

Optimize for SERP Features

Translate schema markup to appear in SERP features

Improve Indexing in Other Languages

Help search engines find your content with multilingual sitemaps

Getting Started

To use Yoast SEO with WPML, you need the following plugins: 

  • Yoast SEO
  • WPML 
  • WPML String Translation
  • WPML SEO (free add-on)

Translate On-Page SEO Elements

WPML can translate all on-page SEO elements you add to content with Yoast. This includes: 

  • SEO titles
  • Meta descriptions
  • URL slugs
  • Image captions
  • Breadcrumbs
  • Social metadata

To translate these elements, simply send the content they belong to for translation: 

  1. Go to WPML → Translation Management. 
  2. Select the page, post, or custom post you want to translate. 
Selecting content to translate in Translation Management
Selecting content to translate in Translation Management
  1. Choose a translation method and translate.

WPML will automatically translate all on-page SEO elements along with the rest of your content. 

Translate Global SEO Texts

To translate global SEO texts, like the breadcrumbs’ homepage label, follow these steps:

  1. Go to WPML → Translation Management.
  2. Scroll down to the Other texts (Strings) section and search for your texts.
  3. Select your texts and send them for translation.

Translate Schema Markup

WPML can translate any kind of schema markup you create with Yoast SEO. This includes product, recipe, review, FAQ, and any other markups Yoast supports. 

To translate your schema markup, simply send your content for translation. WPML will automatically generate the schema markup using your translations. 

Create Multilingual Sitemaps

WPML works together with Yoast to automatically organize your original and translated content in a sitemap. By default, WPML uses only one sitemap for all languages. 

If you want to use a different sitemap for each language, you need to create separate domains for each language.

Implement Hreflang Tags

Hreflang tags help search engines understand how your translations are organized, and which audience each page variation is meant for. 

To avoid having to handle hreflang tags by yourself, WPML automatically manages them for you. 

Whenever you create a page, add a new translation, or make changes to existing content, WPML automatically arranges your hreflang tags in the background. 

Get Started with Yoast SEO & WPML

To use Yoast SEO with WPML, you need WPML’s Multilingual CMS or Multilingual Agency plan. 

To learn more about our plans, visit our pricing page. 

Support & Help

Are you having an issue translating Yoast SEO? Visit our Known Issues and Solutions to find a fix for your problem. 

Still need help? Open a support ticket.