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Slim SEO - Polylang Integration

Polylang is a popular WordPress plugin that allows users to create multilingual websites easily. It enables you to translate posts, pages, custom post types, widgets, menus, and more into multiple languages without requiring a separate WordPress installation.

If you're a Slim SEO user, you'll have a full integration with Polylang, that helps you improve your multilingual site's SEO performance.

Translating meta title and description for posts​

Slim SEO allows you to set specific meta title and meta description for posts. When translating posts with Polylang, Polylang will automatically create another post for the translation. So, if you need to translate the meta title and description, simply enter them for that post as usual.

Translating meta tags settings​

Slim SEO has a settings page, where you can set up the meta tags for post types and taxonomies with dynamic variables:

Dynamic variables in Slim SEO

You can translate these settings with Polylang as well. Simply go to Languages → Translation, and find the settings you want to translate. Slim SEO's settings are listed under the group plugins/slim-seo.

Then in the table list below, you can translate the values for languages:

Translate Slim SEO settings with Polylang

caution

If you don't see Slim SEO's settings here, that means that the settings is not modified and will use the default value. In this case, you need to modify the default settings value at Slim SEO → Meta Tags. Then go back to this screen and you'll see the settings.

info

It's not possible to switch the language (from the language switcher in the admin bar) and enter the translations directly on the Slim SEO's settings page. You must translate the settings on the Polylang's Translations page. Slim SEO always shows the settings for the default language.

Known issue

If you change settings for a post type, when you edit a post, the preview of meta title and meta description will use these settings. However, the settings are always loaded for the default language. But when you view the post on the front end, the settings will be loaded accordingly to the current language.

Hreflang tag and multilingual sitemap​

Another aspect of multilingual SEO is the hreflang tag. By default, Polylang automatically outputs the hreflang in the HTML of the posts on the front end, like this, so Slim SEO has to do nothing:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://example.com/wordcamp-asia-2025/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="vi" href="https://example.com/vi/wordcamp-asia-2025/" />

However, in the XML sitemap for posts, Slim SEO will automatically adds hreflang tags to the sitemap for each post. This is not visible to human, but when you view the source code of the sitemap, you will see it like this:

Multilingual sitemap with Polylang

Both methods (outputting in HTML and in XML sitemap) are the recommended ways to tell Google about translations of your pages.

Known issues​