Help Needed: WordPress Multisite & GSC for Subdomains

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing regarding the setup of your WordPress multisite and Google Search Console (GSC) for your subdomains. Thank you for raising this concern.

When using WordPress Multisite with subdomains, Google treats each subdomain as a separate entity. Therefore, you will need to register each subdomain in Google Search Console individually. This means that while you can add your main domain (mysite.com) as a property, you will also need to add each of your subdomains (like us.mysite.com and uk.mysite.com) as separate properties in GSC.

Once you have added the subdomains, you can submit their respective sitemaps to GSC. Rank Math will generate a sitemap for each subdomain, and you can submit these sitemaps to ensure they are indexed by Google.

Here are some best practices to follow:

• Interlink the main site and the subdomains whenever relevant.
• Register both the subdomain and main domain in Google Search Console separately.
• Perform all the best SEO practices on both the main site and the subdomains.

For more detailed guidance on submitting your sitemap to Google, you can refer to our guide on submitting your sitemap to Google.

If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please feel free to reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further.

Thank you for your understanding!

Sources:
Installing Rank Math on a Multisite Environment » Rank Math
How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines » Rank Math

Hello,

Our bot’s reply is correct where you only submit your website’s sitemap to the property.

The same goes with your subdomains, you will need to create the subdomain property and submit their own sitemaps as they are treated separately.

However, if you want to achieve that website structure and include your subdomain’s sitemap in your main sitemap, you may need to customize this filter:

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/index', function( $xml ) {
	$xml .= '
		<sitemap>
			<loc>https://us.mysite.com/sitemap-index.xml</loc>
			<lastmod>2024-12-02T08:02:27-05:00</lastmod>
		</sitemap>
		<sitemap>
			<loc>https://uk.mysite.com/sitemap-index.xml</loc>
			<lastmod>2024-12-02T08:02:27-05:00</lastmod>
		</sitemap>';
		return $xml;
}, 11 );

If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

Hope that helps.

Hello,

Using the customized filter to include your subdomain sitemaps in your main sitemap can help Google discover those subdomains through the main sitemap, but it does not replace the need to add each subdomain as a separate property in Google Search Console (GSC).

However, since the subdomains’ sitemap should be submitted in their own properties, including the subdomain sitemaps in the main domain’s sitemap might not make much difference.

We hope this helps.

Thanks.

Hello,

I want to create a subdomain for a country in the US, such as us.mysite.com, and display my details as landing pages. For the UK, it would be uk.mysite.com, and so on.

Since these sub-domains such as us.mysite.com will be a single landing page, then we recommend having them as pages in your primary domain.

While either method does not affect the indexing or crawling of your site, it does help to avoid creating a cluster in Google Search Console as you have noted. Also, using single pages helps in terms of managing each sub-domain compared with pages.

We hope this clarifies your issue. If you have any questions or need more help, please let me know.

Thank you for choosing Rank Math!

Hello,

Given that you will have 50+ city-wise landing pages for each country, here are some considerations to help you decide using primary domain pages or subdomains.

1. Using Primary Domain Pages

– When it comes to management it is easier to manage just one WordPress installation against having multiple.

– Google treats subdomains and primary domains almost equally when it comes to indexing and ranking. However, having all your city-wise landing pages under the primary domain can consolidate your domain authority.

– Your Google Search Console setup is simplified without the need to create multiple properties.

2. Using Subdomains

– This method is useful if you want to distinctly separate the content for each country and manage them independently.

– As regards indexing, subdomains might be seen as separate entities, which can be useful if you want to target specific audiences or regions independently.

– It requires adding each subdomain as a separate property, which can become cumbersome with a large number of subdomains.

For ease of management and to avoid clutter in Google Search Console, we recommend creating the city-wise landing pages under your primary domain. This approach leverages your existing domain authority and simplifies your SEO efforts.

If you still prefer using subdomains, ensure you submit each subdomain as a separate property in GSC for better monitoring and control.

We hope this helps.

Thanks.

Hello,

There’s no way to automate the insertion of the FAQs from the Excel file you are using for import into the FAQ block from our plugin.

That step would need to be done manually but this manual labor might not even be worth it given that Google has almost removed all the FAQ rich snippets from SERPs: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes

Importing the FAQs as text to the page it’s a good idea to give your users a place to find answers to the most common questions but if the idea is to generate Rich Results, that is worth all the manual labor given the latest stance from Google on this Schema type.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.

Hello,

You’re correct that due to Google’s recent update, the value of adding FAQ rich snippets has diminished, as Google has significantly reduced the visibility of FAQ rich snippets in search results. This means that the manual effort of adding FAQ blocks might not yield the SEO benefits it once did.

Instead of focusing on the FAQ schema, you can still import your FAQs as regular text content on your pages. This way, your users still benefit from having the FAQs available on each page, which can improve user experience even if it doesn’t directly impact SEO.

Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.