The challenges of a multilingual site
Offering your site in several languages broadens your audience, but complicates the task for search engines. The risk: that Google displays the wrong version to a visitor, for example an English page to a French-speaking user.
The goal of multilingual SEO is to present each person with the version best suited to their language or country.
The role of the hreflang tag
The hreflang tag is a technical signal that tells Google the language and, possibly, the region targeted by each version of a page. It links together the different translations of the same content.
- Associate each version with its language and geographic area
- Avoid confusion between similar content in different languages
- Help Google direct each visitor to the right page
The best practices to remember
A real translation, done by a human, is always better than an approximate machine translation that harms credibility. Keep a consistent structure from one language to another and offer a clear way to switch languages.
Multilingual sites require technical rigour: it's better to plan for it from the design stage. Skywebis structures multilingual sites cleanly to reach each audience in their language, without targeting errors.
Skywebis builds custom, fast, SEO-optimized websites with no forced subscription. You stay the owner of your site.
Discover our solutionsFrequently asked questions
It rarely does the job well: a human translation stays more credible and more effective at convincing.
It isn't mandatory, but strongly recommended as soon as you offer several language versions.
