Problem: You are unsure if your website's translated pages, managed with WPML, are being indexed by search engines, and you want to ensure that search engines like Google display the correct language version of your pages. Solution: If you're experiencing issues with search engines not indexing your translated pages or not displaying them in the correct language, it's important to first verify that your sitemap is correctly set up. WPML's role in SEO is to ensure that plugins like Yoast SEO are aware of the different language versions of your site. We have confirmed that WPML is correctly providing the necessary language information for your pages. However, issues related to the indexing of these pages by search engines like Google fall outside the direct capabilities of WPML. If you have recently submitted your sitemap to Google, please allow at least a day for changes to be reflected. For further assistance, we recommend contacting Yoast support or Google's support team to investigate why the pages are not being indexed as expected.
Please note that this solution might be outdated or not applicable to your specific case. We highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If the issue persists, please open a new support ticket with us.
Problem: You want to create an overview on your website using WPML to see the original page and all connected pages with their translated slugs, organized in columns. Solution: We recommend developing a new functionality with custom code. Although creating custom code solutions falls outside our support scope, you can explore our hooks that might help you achieve this. Please check the WPML Hooks Reference for potential solutions.
If this solution does not apply to your case, or if it seems outdated, we highly recommend checking related known issues at https://wpml.org/known-issues/, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. Should you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to open a new support ticket or visit our support forum at WPML Support Forum.
Problem: The client has a redirect URL on their site that is hidden from the sitemap.xml, but the hreflang is still referencing this redirect URL on a translated page. This causes an "incorrect hreflang link" error in SEMRush because it references a redirect URL. Solution: We do not provide functionality to directly change hreflang links for redirect URLs. We recommend contacting the support team of the SEO plugin in use to see if they can offer a solution for this specific need. Additionally, for custom solutions, we suggest reaching out to our specialized contractors at https://wpml.org/contractors/.
If this solution does not seem relevant to your situation, please open a new support ticket with us for further assistance at our support forum.
Problem: The client is using SEMrush to audit pages and has concerns about pages not having a self-referencing hreflang tag. They provided two URLs with different issues. The first URL has a discrepancy between the HTML lang attribute and the hreflang tag. The second URL includes UTM parameters, and the client is unsure if this affects the self-referencing hreflang tag. Solution: We explained that the hreflang attribute does not need to include the locale; the language code alone is sufficient. The hreflang tags for the first URL are set correctly, and there is indeed a self-referencing hreflang tag:
For more information on hreflang tags and language codes, we recommended checking the RFC 5646 documentation: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5646 Regarding the second URL, we confirmed that the presence of UTM parameters does not affect the hreflang attribute, as it is generated without the URL parameters:
Problem: The client is experiencing issues with duplicate title tags in SEO audits, particularly with pages that have been translated by WPML. The client is concerned about English terms not being translated in articles for different languages, which is common in their field. Solution: If you're experiencing issues with duplicate title tags in your SEO audits for pages translated by WPML, it's important to note that WPML's role is to provide an interface for translating content. SEO concerns, such as duplicate title tags, are outside of our direct area of responsibility. We ensure that translations are handled correctly, but how these translations are interpreted by SEO tools is not something we can control. If you're facing this issue, we recommend reviewing your SEO strategy and possibly consulting with an SEO expert to address these concerns.
