Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
Assuming you are using the latest version of all the plugins and the themes (please update if not yet), could you please install the glue plugin from WPML that helps integrate SEO plugins (if not yet) and then report back if the issue still persists?
https://wpml.org/compatibility/2021/04/wpml-seo-plugin-better-integration-with-seo-plugins/
I hope that helps.
Thank you.
Hi Reinelle,
Thanks for your quick reply.
I’m using the lastest version of all plugins (WPML Multilingual CMS 4.5.2, WPML String Translation 3.2.0) and WordPress 5.8.3 with Twenty Twenty-One theme. Installing and activating WPML SEO 2.0.1 doesn’t solve this issue.
Best, Joris
Hello,
We might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress logins and an affected URL in the designated Sensitive Data section.
Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.
It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
We really look forward to helping you.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Hello,
By default, our plugin sets a self-referencing canonical on all pages if they are set to index and that’s the intended behavior because by default all pages set to index should be set with a canonical.
When people want to change that functionality they can resort to the filter you mentioned or the canonical URL setting in the advanced tab of the Rank Math SEO Metabox.
Hope this helps clarify your doubts.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hi Miguel,
Thanks for your reply and looking into this.
I do understand what you’re saying but in this case, when using the WPML fallback to default language option, there are only posts in the default language available. Because the post doesn’t exist in a translated version it’s only possible to edit the canonical URL, or robots meta settings, for the original language and since these are fine this is not needed (or wanted).
It’s not possible to adjust any settings for a fallback post as these don’t actually exists and therefore are not editable.
I’ve resolved this issue for this particular website by using a filter but anyone, using the WPML fallback to default language option, will have the same problem and in many cases will not even know about it or don’t know how to solve this.
You state at your website (https://rankmath.com/kb/multilingual-seo-wpml/) that Rank Math SEO and WPML work hand-in-hand and With these two plugins you will have fully optimized content but when using the WPML fallback to default language option this is not (far from) the case.
Best, Joris
Hello,
Even if you have the fallback to the main language of your website our plugin will look at the page as a different URL than the original one and as such automatically add the self-referencing canonical URL as we mentioned previously.
This is the expected behavior of our plugin as that is a different new page on your website even though it’s not translated and if you want to prevent that and the duplicate content you need to set the option to only show the translated versions of the pages.
When you add a translation plugin we assume that you are trying to translate the entire website and any portion that is not translated is not shown by activating the option we mentioned before.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hello Miguel,
I understand you’re assumption that, when one is using a translation plugin, the intention is to translate a website. However WPML does have an option to use a fallback to the default language for non-translated posts/pages. Also Rank Math SEO claims to generate fully optimized content when using both Rank Math SEO and WPML but this is, in this scenario, not the case.
As you state Rank Math SEO will look at a fallback page as a different URL than the original one and as such adds the self-referencing canonical URL. This is incorrect behaviour – a fallback page should use the canonical URL of the default language – and, at least in my opinion, should be corrected as this introduces SEO problems which cannot be the intention of a SEO plugin.
To be clear; I have solved this problem on my websites by using a filter. I am just trying to describe a bug in the hope that it will be fixed to make Rank Math SEO even better. It is up to you whether you want to solve this or not.
Thanks, Joris
Hello,
There was some confusion on my part initially and reading through the thread again we now understand exactly the situation that you are referring to. Apologize for the back and forth with this.
We are going to add this to our internal repository as a feature improvement and the dev team will evaluate this and see if there’s something we can do from our side or at least report it back to WPML for better integration.
Thank you for taking the time to give the feedback and sorry again for the misunderstood.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hello Miguel,
I’m glad it’s all clear now and even more so that you’re passing it on to the dev team. I’m looking forward to a future fix for this.
Thanks, Joris
Hello,
We are glad that we could address your concern. We should get back to you if we have an update about it soon.
In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact us again if you need our assistance with anything else.
