Checklist
WordPress multilingual SEO checklist.
Print it, copy it, or walk it on a staging site. No email wall. This is the list we use when a translated site should actually rank.
URLs and indexability
- Each language has a real, crawlable address (a subdirectory is enough).
- Translated pages do not canonicalize back to the source language.
- hreflang points every language at every sibling, including x-default.
- The XML sitemap lists the language URLs you actually want indexed.
- No language lives only in a cookie or a JavaScript widget.
On-page SEO
- Title, meta description, and Open Graph text are translated, not copied.
- Image alt text is translated where it is real content, not a filename.
- Internal links inside translated HTML point at the matching language URL.
- Yoast or RankMath JSON-LD does not disagree with the visible page.
Commerce and forms
- Cart, checkout, and mini-cart fragments translate after the first load.
- Prices and currency symbols are never rewritten.
- Order and form emails go out in the visitor's language.
- Admin copies of orders and entries stay in the original words.
Operations
- Page cache varies by language URL, not by the first visitor that day.
- A monthly character cap exists so a crawl cannot surprise-bill you.
- Staging sites cannot call the paid translation API by default.
- You can export the translation memory if a human translator needs it.
- Disabling the plugin later does not delete stored translations unless you choose that.
The longer explanation of URL patterns and hreflang is in themultilingual WordPress guide. How LocaleReady implements this is onfeatures.
Want the plugin that already does this list?
LocaleReady is built around stored translations, real language URLs, and a spend cap.