Hreflang in header...should I do a Sitemap?

[navdm]

A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

There are many ways to do it. In my opinion:

• If the amount of pages is low, you can do it in just one sitemap.
• If the amount is really huge, do it in different sitemaps, stating in the name of each of them the language (e.g. sitemap-es-mx.xml) and create a sitemap_index.hml with all those.

Remember that its best practice to have the sitemaps in the root folder: domain.com/sitemap

Best luck.
GR.

[navdm]

Hi Gaston - Thanks for the response. My urls are set up like so:

• mysite.com/us/en/page
• mysite.com/fr/fr/page
• mysite.com/ca/fr/page
• mysite.com/mx/es/page
• mysite.com/es/es/page

And so on. Would you recommend doing a separate sitemap for each language/country? Thus:

• mysite.com/us/en/sitemap.xml
• mysite.com/fr/fr/sitemap.xml
• mysite.com/ca/fr/sitemap.xml
• mysite.com/mx/es/sitemap.xml
• mysite.com/es/es/sitemap.xml

Thanks!

[GastonRiera]

Hello there!

Yes you should, better you must do a sitemap, but do not include the hreflang attribute.
Here: Google Search Console help you can see how a sitemap INCLUDING the hreflang looks like. Remove the portion:

<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/></xhtml:link>

Hope it helps.
Good Luck!
GR.