Multi-Language Sites and SEO

Updated March 4, 2025

Rosetta Stone

America has always been a melting pot of cultures and different nationalities and with the internet and reduced transportation costs, the world has become smaller. Because of this, you might be considering offering your website in multiple different languages. So, if you’re thinking of adding a Spanish, or Chinese, version of your site, what will it do to your SEO?

New Language, New Site?

One of the first steps to consider is; should you have a separate website? Companies like Dyson have huge brand recognition worldwide, so for them having a different website for dyson.com or dyson.fr is a no-brainer. Everyone knows the name of their company so there’s no need to change the website URL for a different market, and they know their brand will generate searches. However, if your brand name isn’t as well known, or you think it may be difficult for users to find in another language you could consider making a separate site with a separate URL.

In some ways having a second site, in your second language, is simpler. It will not detract from the SEO efforts on your English language site as it is a totally separate entity. Then you just have two sites that you need to optimize, one in language A the other in language B. But, there are a number of problems with that plan.

Firstly, your new site will be just that; new. You will be starting from zero from both an SEO standpoint and a branding standpoint. So you won’t have any SEO juice coming from your old website (apart from Links) to help you get things moving. You will also need to pay for a second domain and pay to host it, and it will need to be separately maintained and updated. So, unless you’re a big company, this might not be the best course of action.

Choose Your Language

The most popular method for companies that are not internationally recognized is to have a language option installed on your website. Typically a button at the top or bottom of the web page will allow the user to switch between the available languages by taking them to a different domain or directory on the site.

On WordPress this can be done in a number of different ways. One of the most popular ways involves using a plugin to set up a sub directory on your website. So your website’s URL would look like this; example.com/es  for Spanish. Or you can set up a different domain, so your website URL would look like this en.example.com, es.example.com, fr.example.com and so on.

These options allow you to have the content on your existing site, so will add no additional cost, and is easy to set up. However, when it comes to SEO, the situation is slightly more complex.

Directory or Domain

The two options outlined above are Google’s recommendations for how to create content in different languages for the same site. However, the general feeling is that setting up a domain for each website makes the content more “separate” which in turn damages the cumulative effect of the content on the site/sites SEO ranking. So I would recommend that you find a plugin that helps you set up different subdirectories on your website. One example of a plugin that can help you do this is Polylang. This paid plugin will help you set up the site architectures needed to get your site up and running in two languages.