Have a multilingual website

Hello everyone, I have a multilingual website coded by my team. We are wondering how to design a sitemap properly.
Currently there are 2 options.
- The first is to create multiple sitemaps, one for each language. But I wonder if every time there is a new post, I have to update it manually?
- The second option is to use only one sitemap and use the "hreflang" tag. I did, but it doesn't seem to work
Here is the example I used:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
.......
<url>
<loc>https://name.com/refund-policy</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://name.com/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh" href="https://name.com/zh/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://name.com/es/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://name.com/ru/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" ref="https://name.com/en/refund-policy"/>
</url>
......
</urlset>
I need everyone's help. Thank

Sitemap index with a sitemap for each should work. Didnt catch the part of "update manually". Your cms should update everything automatically.

StevenTed said:

Hello everyone, I have a multilingual website coded by my team. We are wondering how to design a sitemap properly.
Currently there are 2 options.
- The first is to create multiple sitemaps, one for each language. But I wonder if every time there is a new post, I have to update it manually?
- The second option is to use only one sitemap and use the "hreflang" tag. I did, but it doesn't seem to work
Here is the example I used:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
.......
<url>
<loc>https://name.com/refund-policy</loc>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://name.com/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="zh" href="https://name.com/zh/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://name.com/es/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://name.com/ru/refund-policy"/>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" ref="https://name.com/en/refund-policy"/>
</url>
......
</urlset>
I need everyone's help. Thank

Click to expand...

you are on the right track using the hreflang tag but make sure to keep few things on your consideration like loc tags on the URLs format, verify implementations and monitor the changes when new content is added also I would prefer multiple sitemaps for better performance.

SEO Sparton said:

you are on the right track using the hreflang tag but make sure to keep few things on your consideration like loc tags on the URLs format, verify implementations and monitor the changes when new content is added also I would prefer multiple sitemaps for better performance.

Click to expand...

So every time I have a new article, I will have to manually update this link in the sitemap?