In a destination like Ibiza, a large share of many businesses’ customers don’t speak Spanish. Having your website in several languages isn’t an extra: it’s a condition for competing. But there’s a big difference between a translated website and a well-built multilingual one.
The most common mistake: the automatic translation button
Plugins that translate the page “on the fly” in the browser look convenient, but they have serious problems:
- Google doesn’t index those translations, so you don’t appear in searches in other languages.
- Quality is patchy, and badly translated copy looks unprofessional right at the moment someone is deciding whether to buy or book.
- You don’t control what’s shown: proper names, prices or legal terms can end up translated incorrectly.
URL structure: choose one and be consistent
Each language needs its own URL, accessible and crawlable. The most common options are:
- Subfolders (
yoursite.com/en/): the easiest option to maintain and the one we recommend in most cases. All SEO authority is concentrated on a single domain. - Subdomains (
en.yoursite.com): valid, but Google treats them somewhat more independently. - Separate domains (
yoursite.de,yoursite.co.uk): only makes sense if you really operate different markets with separate strategies.
What you should never do is serve different languages on the same URL depending on browser settings or a cookie.
Hreflang: telling Google which version to show
hreflang tags tell search engines that two pages are the same content in different languages. That way Google shows the English version to people searching in English, and avoids treating translations as duplicate content.
They must be reciprocal (each version points to all the others, including itself), and it’s worth adding an x-default version for users of languages you don’t cover. It’s a technical detail, but a mistake here can cancel out much of the translation work.
Translating isn’t the same as adapting
A British tourist and a German one don’t search the same way or care about the same things. A good multilingual website adapts:
- Keywords: the way people search for a service changes in every language. They need researching, not translating literally.
- Formats: dates, currencies, phone numbers with international dialling codes.
- Relevant content: information on how to get there from the airport, accepted payment methods or cancellation policy may matter more to foreign visitors.
The language switcher, done properly
It should be visible, use the name of each language in that language (“English”, “Deutsch”) and lead to the same page in the other language, not to the home page. Avoid using flags alone: a flag represents a country, not a language.
Keeping versions in sync
The long-term problem with many multilingual websites is that the main version gets updated and the others fall behind. A content management system that shows which pages still need translating, or a clear workflow with whoever does the translation, stops the English version from showing last year’s prices.