SEO: hreflang, sitemaps and canonical
- hreflang — every page lists the versions in the other languages in the
<head>. - Canonical and
og:url— on translated pages they keep the language prefix, with Yoast SEO, Rank Math and Slim SEO. A canonical pointing to the original page would tell Google the translation is duplicate content. - Sitemap — the plugin has no sitemap of its own: it adds the translated pages to the one you already have and already submitted to Search Console.
- Yoast SEO, Rank Math and Slim SEO — each page gets one
<url>per language, with all versions in<xhtml:link hreflang>, as Google recommends. - No SEO plugin — the WordPress
wp-sitemap.xmlgets one sitemap per language.
- Yoast SEO, Rank Math and Slim SEO — each page gets one
- Saving the languages clears the Rank Math and Yoast sitemap cache, so a new language shows up right away.
- URL slugs stay in the source language, on purpose — see why the slug is not translated.
URLs, search and dates
URL slugs stay in the source language
Only the language prefix changes: /produto/blusas-e-camisas/ becomes /en/produto/blusas-e-camisas/, /es/produto/blusas-e-camisas/, and so on. The plugin knows the site’s real slugs and restores them in any language (including the ones WooCommerce translates on its own, such as marca/brand).
No rewrite rules are needed: /en/shop/ works with the permalinks the site already has.
Why the slug is not translated
It is a deliberate decision, made for search engines and for every link that already points to your site.
- Each language already has its own URL. The prefix gives every language version a separate address, which is what Google recommends for multilingual sites. Translating the slug as well adds nothing to that separation.
- No duplicate content. Duplicate content is the same page reachable at several addresses, with nothing telling Google which one counts. Here every translated page has exactly one address per language, a canonical that keeps the language prefix and
hreflanglinks to all its other versions — so Google reads them as language versions of one page, not as copies competing with each other (see SEO: hreflang, sitemaps and canonical). - Links never break. A translated slug would change whenever its translation changes — a fixed typo, a string reviewed by hand, a new glossary rule — and each time the old address would return a 404 or need a 301 redirect. Links shared on social media, in newsletters or by other sites would pile up redirects or stop working. With the source slug, the address of a page never changes, in any language.
- Your ranking carries over. Backlinks and everything Google already knows about
/produto/blusas-e-camisas/apply naturally to/en/produto/blusas-e-camisas/: the path is the same, only the language changes. - Google reads the language from the content. Google determines the language of a page from its visible text, not from the words in its URL. A translated page with a source-language slug is indexed and shown as a page in its own language.
- Nothing to maintain. No slug per language to review, no redirects to create after a change, no rewrite rules to keep in sync and no extra lookup when a page is served.
In short: a translated slug can look slightly friendlier in a search result, but it trades away stability. The plugin keeps one permanent address per page and per language, and lets the prefix, the canonical and
hreflangtell Google everything it needs.
Search
Someone searching in another language finds results. If a visitor in English searches for “jacket”, the plugin looks up the matching source term (“Casaco”) — the theme and the search engine do not need to know anything.
Dates
The date format saved in the settings often carries text from the source language (j \d\e F \d\e Y would give “9 de September de 2026”). On translated pages the plugin uses each language’s own format (September 9, 2026).
Page cache
- Each language is a different address, so the page cache stores each version separately.
- After translating, the plugin automatically purges the translated versions of the pages that changed in: WP-Optimize, LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache.
- With another caching system, you may have to purge it by hand after a large translation (or hook it up through the actions in For developers).
Warning: cache lifetime under 12 hours. If the theme shows a login box in the header (or any form with a nonce), that security code is only valid for 12 to 24 hours. On a page cached for longer than that, the login fails silently. This applies to every language.