Not all locales are generated in sitemap.xml of a docusaurus website

[chengtie]

(* StackOverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77479158 *)

I have a website made by docusaurus 2.0.0-beta.18. Initially it was in English, then I added Chinese version for many pages with i18. So a page like https://www.mywebsite.com/zh-CN/docs/a-page displays well contents in Chinese.

However, I just realized that 1) lots of Chinese pages are not indexed in Google; 2) none of the Chinese pages are in sitemap.xml.

Does anyone know how to fix the site map and help Chinese pages indexed by Google?

PS: (part of) docusaurus.config.js:

const path = require('path');
module.exports = {
  title: 'my website',
  tagline: 'The tagline of my site',
  onBrokenLinks: 'ignore',
  url: 'https://www.mywebsite.com',
  baseUrl: '/', // if we use GitHub Pages, we need to set this to '/docusaurus/', and also change routing links in some pages
  favicon: 'img/favicon.ico',
  organizationName: 'softtimur', // Usually your GitHub org/user name.
  projectName: 'docusaurus', // Usually your repo name.
  trailingSlash: false,
  plugins: [
    path.resolve(__dirname, './plugins/monaco-loader'),
  ],
  themeConfig: {
    navbar: {
      title: 'my website',
      logo: {
        alt: 'My Site Logo',
        src: 'img/logo.svg',
      },
      items: [
        {
          label: 'Documentation', position: 'left',
          items: [
            { label: 'Introduction', to: 'docs/introduction' },
            { label: 'Getting Started', to: 'docs/try-samples' }
          ]
        },
        { to: 'demo', label: 'Live Demo', position: 'left' }, // to src/pages/demo.js
        {
          label: 'Persons', position: 'left',
          items: [
            { label: 'Get my website', to: 'docs/consumer-buy' },
            { label: 'Follow Free Videos and Contents', to: 'docs/free-videos' },
            { label: 'Request a Help', to: 'docs/help-your-work' }
          ]
        },
        {
          label: 'Businesses', position: 'left',
          items: [
            { label: 'Get my website Together', to: 'docs/group-buy' },
            { label: 'Other Services', to: 'docs/web-development' }
          ]
        },
        {
          label: 'Language and Programming', position: 'left',
          items: [
            { label: 'Course in English', to: 'https://go.mywebsite.com/RJ2HPz' },
            { label: 'Course in Chinese', to: 'https://go.mywebsite.com/2KjQzL' },
          ]
        }
        ,
        {
          to: '#',
          position: 'right',
        },
        {
          to: '/logout',
          label: 'Sign Out',
          position: 'right',
        },
        {
          to: '/login',
          label: 'Sign In',
          position: 'right',
        },
        {
          type: 'localeDropdown',
          position: 'right',
        },

      ],
    },
    footer: {
      style: 'dark',
      links: [
        {
          title: 'Documentation',
          items: [
            {
              label: 'Try samples',
              to: 'docs/try-samples',
            },
            {
              label: 'Installation',
              to: 'docs/installation',
            }
          ],
        },
        {
          title: 'Philosophy and Research',
          items: [
            {
              label: 'Fundamentals',
              to: 'docs/fundamentals'
            },
          ],
        },
        {
          title: 'Community',
          items: [
            {
              label: 'LinkedIn',
              href: 'https://www.linkedin.com/in/softtimur/'
            }
          ],
        },
        {
          title: 'Company',
          items: [
            {
              label: 'About Us',
              to: 'docs/about-us'
            },
            {
              label: '❤ We are hiring!',
              to: 'docs/hiring'
            }
          ],
        }
      ],
    },
  },
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        googleAnalytics: {
          trackingID: 'UA-68622074-6',
        },
        docs: {
          sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebars.js'),
        },
        theme: {
          customCss: require.resolve('./src/css/custom.css'),
        },
        sitemap: {
          changefreq: 'weekly',
          priority: 0.5,
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
  scripts : [
    '/js/patch.js'
  ],
  i18n: {
    defaultLocale: 'en',
    locales: ['en', 'zh-CN'],  // Add 'zh-CN' here
    localeConfigs: {
      en: {
        label: 'English',
        htmlLang: 'en-GB',
      },
      'zh-CN': {   // Add this section for Simplified Chinese
        label: '简体中文',
        htmlLang: 'zh-Hans',
      },
    },
  }
};

[Josh-Cena]

Each locale is built independently and emits its own sitemap; this is both a limitation of our architecture and can be considered a feature. This is so that we support deploying different locales to different URLs. Conceptually, you should treat each locale as an independent site—I'm sure this also helps with SEO because the search engine can handle each locale independently :) You can manually upload /zh-CN/sitemap.xml.

[chengtie]

Helllo @Josh-Cena,

Thank you for the reply.

At the moment, I have mywebsite.com as a domain property in Google Search Console. There are two options to manage the Chinese website.

1. adding www.mywebsite.com/zh-CN/sitemap.xml to mywebsite.com
2. adding www.mywebiste.com/zh-CN as a domain property in Google Search Console and uploading www.mywebsite.com/zh-CN/sitemap.xml to it

Which one will solve all the index problem and have a good SEO for the Chinese website?

Tie

[Josh-Cena]

I would go for the second.

[chengtie]

When adding a domain property, Google Search Console proposes two possibilities as shown in the screenshot.

At the moment, we have already mywebsite.com as a domain property. Do you think adding https://www.mywebsite.com/zh-CN/ (Google Search console adds a slash automatically if we add https://www.mywebsite.com/zh-CN) will be the best setting?

[Josh-Cena]

Sorry, I'm not an SEO master. I would suggest taking this question to an SEO forum instead.