Languages
Multilingual SEO blogs
Translation spreads a page. It also spreads a mistake. Accept the source, then give each language its own address.
A site that serves more than one country has a practical problem, not a branding one. A reader in Amsterdam should not land on an English article with a widget that says "translate." They should land on a Dutch URL that was written for that market, with the same facts and the local way of asking.
Machine translation is fit for that once the source is true. It is a poor first draft of your expertise. If the English post invents a detail, the French post will invent it with a better accent.
Ship a language only after the source is real
- 1
Write and accept the source article. Acceptance means a person read the claims.
- 2
Translate into the languages this site actually sells in. A language with no offer and no support is a page you cannot stand behind.
- 3
Give each translation its own URL. Do not swap the body on a single address based on a cookie. Crawlers and people should share the same link.
- 4
Tell the languages about each other, with hreflang or the equivalent your stack already supports, so the English page is not competing with the Dutch page for a Dutch query.
- 5
Keep titles and the answer in the first screen in that language. A translated body under an English title is a mixed page, and mixed pages get the wrong audience.
Local is not the same as translated
Some paragraphs should not be translated at all. They should be replaced. A pricing example in dollars, a holiday, a city, a regulation. The brief for that section is "write this for this market," and the rest of the article can follow the source.
If you cannot maintain that difference, do not publish the language yet. A wrong local fact is worse than an English page, because the reader trusts it more.
The usual multilingual mess
- One URL, three languages, and a sitemap that only lists one.
- The homepage is translated and the blog is not, so the reader hits a wall on the second click.
- An update lands in English and the other languages keep the old claim for months.
