Multilingual Websites - SEO Best Practices
SEOClerk.com has a massive community of both sellers and buyers of SEO services. Giving the fact that we are a very diverse community with people all over the world I thought we should share out insights about best practices for multilingual websites.
I've noticed a lot of websites in the United States are multilingual but very few are optimized correctly, and I believe that can hurt the overall organic potential such sites can have.
So what is a multilingual website?
Well in some countries or some industries it may be necessary to have the same content in multiple languages. This is especially true in Europe, where most big companies and even smaller ones have an English version of the site, no matter what is the native language of the business or what country domain the website haves.
Subdomain or subdirectory, which is best for SEO?
I've seen a lot of websites using subdomains for their second language, and none had any decent traffic. Just like having a blog on a subdomain, SEO potential sucks! You are way better off with subdirectories!
Here are some general rules I follow when it comes to choosing between subdomains and subdirectories:
- Always keep your primary language in the clean domain. So if English is your primary language, keep the content on example.com. Never have it redirect to example.com/en/!
- Always use a subdirectory and NOT a subdomain. In other words use: example.com/es/; example.com/it/; example.com/de/ etc.
- Subdomains have terrible SEO potential. Stay away from en.example.com or es.example.com versions of your website.
Think about user experience!
Give your users the possibility to switch between languages! In other words, if a Spanish speaking person ends up on the English version of the website, give them a visible, clear option to switch the language. This button is usually placed in the right upper corner of the site.
Use the hreflang attribute!
One of the biggest mistakes multi languages website have is not implementing or not implementing the hreflang tag correctly.
More info about this attribute and how to implement it here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
But basically, this tag helps Google and other search engines understand that your website has multiple languages based content and various versions of the same material. You need to inform search engines where the alternate pages are while using hreflang correctly.
Keep in mind the content doesn't need to be an exact translation. As long as the message told in the content is about the same for both languages, Google has no problem with slight variations and a non-exact translation.
I've noticed a lot of websites in the United States are multilingual but very few are optimized correctly, and I believe that can hurt the overall organic potential such sites can have.
So what is a multilingual website?
Well in some countries or some industries it may be necessary to have the same content in multiple languages. This is especially true in Europe, where most big companies and even smaller ones have an English version of the site, no matter what is the native language of the business or what country domain the website haves.
Subdomain or subdirectory, which is best for SEO?
I've seen a lot of websites using subdomains for their second language, and none had any decent traffic. Just like having a blog on a subdomain, SEO potential sucks! You are way better off with subdirectories!
Here are some general rules I follow when it comes to choosing between subdomains and subdirectories:
- Always keep your primary language in the clean domain. So if English is your primary language, keep the content on example.com. Never have it redirect to example.com/en/!
- Always use a subdirectory and NOT a subdomain. In other words use: example.com/es/; example.com/it/; example.com/de/ etc.
- Subdomains have terrible SEO potential. Stay away from en.example.com or es.example.com versions of your website.
Think about user experience!
Give your users the possibility to switch between languages! In other words, if a Spanish speaking person ends up on the English version of the website, give them a visible, clear option to switch the language. This button is usually placed in the right upper corner of the site.
Use the hreflang attribute!
One of the biggest mistakes multi languages website have is not implementing or not implementing the hreflang tag correctly.
More info about this attribute and how to implement it here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
But basically, this tag helps Google and other search engines understand that your website has multiple languages based content and various versions of the same material. You need to inform search engines where the alternate pages are while using hreflang correctly.
Keep in mind the content doesn't need to be an exact translation. As long as the message told in the content is about the same for both languages, Google has no problem with slight variations and a non-exact translation.
