Make translated pages discoverable
A translated route becomes discoverable through crawlable internal links, language alternates, and the active SEO plugin's sitemap and robots policy.
Prepare the route
- Enable the target language.
- Translate the object's public content.
- Save a localized post or term slug.
- Verify the URL returns status 200 while logged out.
- Confirm the
<html lang>value matches the locale. - Translate supported SEO metadata.
- Check canonical and hreflang output.
POM Translate can localize front pages, singular content, taxonomies, post-type archives, authors, search results, and pagination when the underlying WordPress route exists.
Create crawl paths
Add target-language links through:
- a server-rendered language selector;
- translated navigation;
- localized contextual links;
- archive and taxonomy navigation;
- Rank Math sitemap alternates where applicable.
Do not rely only on browser-language redirection. Crawlers and users must be able to follow stable HTML links to every intended language route.
Indexability remains external
POM Translate does not emit a page-level robots policy. Check the SEO plugin for:
- global post-type and taxonomy index settings;
- per-object
noindex; - sitemap exclusion;
- canonical overrides;
- archive policies.
Robots rules, password protection, draft status, or a maintenance environment can prevent discovery even when language routing is correct.
Verify without personalization
Use a logged-out request without an existing language cookie. Confirm the target URL remains stable, does not redirect based on browser preference after an explicit language choice, and exposes crawlable links to its alternates.
Then inspect the SEO plugin's sitemap and submit only the production canonical sitemap index. POM Translate keeps root sitemap paths unprefixed.