Is the ‘rel=alternate’ Tag in Your Sitemap Necessary?

2 responses to “Is ‘rel=alternate’ Necessary in Sitemaps?”

1. When dealing with multilingual or regional versions of the same content, you might encounter the rel="alternate" link along with the hreflang attribute in your sitemaps. Let’s explore whether including these lines in your sitemap is necessary or potentially beneficial for your SEO.

   Understanding rel="alternate" hreflang="x"

   The rel="alternate" hreflang="x" links are used to indicate to search engines that certain URLs are alternate language or regional versions of a webpage. This helps search engines serve the correct version of your site to users based on their language or regional preferences.

   Use Case

   • Purpose: It tells search engines like Google about the different language versions of content, which can guide them on which version should be shown to users in different locales.
   • Benefit: Proper implementation can improve user experience and improve the likelihood that users from different locales see the correct version of the content. This can reduce bounce rates and improve engagement metrics.

   Analysis of Your Sitemap

   Based on the XML snippet you provided:

   xml
<url>
<loc>https://example_com/product/acme</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example_com/product/acme" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://de.example_com/product/acme" />
<changefreq>yearly</changefreq>
</url>

   Considerations

   1. Not Part of Traditional XML Sitemap Protocol: As you noted, the traditional XML sitemap protocol doesn’t refer to xhtml:link or hreflang directly. These elements are part of advanced sitemap usage intended for multilingual SEO.

   2. Search Engine Recognition: Despite the lack of mention in the original protocol, search engines such as Google do recognize and process hreflang attributes within sitemaps. If Google Search Console states the sitemaps are well-formed, this means they are being recognized.

   3. Multilingual SEO: Given that you have two properties (https://example_com and https://de.example_com), including these hreflang attributes can be beneficial for properly signaling to search engines about the different linguistic versions of your pages.

   4. Compatibility and Future-Proofing: While Google supports these tags, it’s always wise to ensure that this doesn’t conflict with how other

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2. This is a fascinating topic! The inclusion of `rel=alternate` tags in your sitemaps can indeed be a bit of a gray area. While it’s true that the official sitemap protocol doesn’t explicitly require them, they play a critical role when it comes to hreflang attributes and managing multilingual sites.

   Using `xhtml:link` elements with `hreflang` helps search engines understand the relationship between your different language versions of the same content. This can enhance user experience by directing users to the most appropriate version based on their language preferences, thereby potentially improving your click-through rates and engagement metrics.

   That said, if Google Search Console confirms that your sitemap is well-formed, it suggests that the crawlers are correctly interpreting the structure. Removing these tags could lead to a missed opportunity for better international SEO if you have a significant audience in different regions.

   If you’re still uncertain about their impact, consider A/B testing with and without these tags to analyze any changes in traffic or indexing. Ultimately, maintaining a robust multilingual strategy aligned with best practices for hreflang implementation could yield positive results long-term. Would love to hear how you decide to move forward!

   Reply