You Enabled Multilingual WordPress — How Do You Know It's Working?

How do you confirm your site is truly multilingual — and indexed?

In a globalized marketing environment, multilingual support has become a key strategy for traffic, conversion and SEO. Yet many site owners enable a second language and never verify whether the site truly supports it — or whether search engines indexed those pages. This article explains how to check that multilingual is really on, and how to ensure Google indexes the pages.

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1. Is multilingual actually enabled?

Not sure? Check with these methods:

1. Look for a multilingual URL structure

Multilingual sites usually distinguish languages one of these ways:

• Subdirectories (recommended) https://example.com/en/ (English) https://example.com/zh/ (Chinese)
• Subdomains https://en.example.com/ (English) https://zh.example.com/ (Chinese)
• ccTLDs (country domains) https://example.cn/ (China) https://example.fr/ (France)
• Query parameters (not recommended) https://example.com/?lang=en https://example.com/?lang=zh

👉 How to check: Type /en/ or /zh/ into the address bar manually. A 404 means multilingual isn't configured correctly.

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2. Look for a language switcher

Most multilingual sites put a language switcher in the nav or footer.

👉 How to check:

• Is there an "English | 中文" switcher?
• Does the URL change when you switch?
• No switcher likely means multilingual isn't live yet.

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3. Check the hreflang tags (recommended)

Google relies on hreflang to distinguish language versions. Correct hreflang = multilingual support.

👉 How to check:

1. Visit your page (e.g. https://example.com/).
2. Right-click → View page source.
3. Search for hreflang. Code like this means you're set: <link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh" href="https://example.com/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/en/" />
4. If it's missing, configure Rank Math SEO or WPML to add it.

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2. Are the multilingual pages indexed?

Even with languages enabled, Google won't necessarily index them right away. Confirm with:

1. Google site search

The site: operator checks whether a language section is indexed.

👉 How to check:

• Search: site:example.com/en/ — this lists every indexed page under /en/. No results means Google hasn't indexed your English pages yet.
• Or check a single page: site:example.com/en/your-page.

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2. Google Search Console

1. Log in to GSC.
2. Select your site, open Indexing > Pages.
3. Check the indexed list for /en/ pages.
4. Use URL Inspection on a specific English URL and click Request indexing to speed things up.

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3. Check robots.txt

If Google can't crawl /en/, it can't index it.

👉 How to check:

• Visit https://example.com/robots.txt
• Make sure it does not contain: Disallow: /en/
• If it does, remove that line.

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4. Submit a sitemap

If the pages aren't indexed yet, submit a sitemap manually.

Steps:

1. Open Rank Math SEO > Sitemap Settings
2. Confirm your sitemap URL: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml or https://example.com/sitemap-en.xml
3. Submit it in Google Search Console:
   • GSC → Indexing > Sitemaps
   • Add sitemap-en.xml
   • Click Submit and wait for the crawl.

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3. Optimizing multilingual SEO

✅ 1. Get hreflang right

• Rank Math / WPML add it automatically.
• Every language page should point at its translated counterpart.

✅ 2. Add internal links

• Link to English pages from the homepage and blog posts so Google discovers /en/ faster.

✅ 3. Share on social media

• Post English URLs to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit for external signals.

✅ 4. Earn backlinks

• Get English blogs, forums and external sites to reference your English pages.

✅ 5. Request indexing in GSC

• Enter URLs manually and click Request indexing.

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Conclusion

📌 Verify multilingual is on:

• Check the URL structure (is there an /en/ section?).
• Look for the language switcher.
• Check hreflang tags.

📌 Verify Google indexed it:

• site: searches.
• Google Search Console.
• robots.txt isn't blocking.

📌 Speed up indexing:

• Submit sitemaps to GSC.
• Internal links & backlinks for discoverability.
• Manual indexing requests.

Follow this and your multilingual pages will get indexed and perform. 🚀