A Spanish and English website: how to do it right (and what to avoid)
If your customers speak two languages, your site should too. How to organize it for people and for Google.
In the US, Puerto Rico and tourist areas of Latin America, many businesses serve customers in two languages. A well-built bilingual site speaks to all of them. A poorly built one confuses both groups.
How to organize it
- A separate address for each language, for example yourbusiness.com/es and yourbusiness.com/en. Google recommends separate URLs per language.
- A visible language switcher on every page.
- hreflang tags: code that tells Google which page is the other-language version of which.
What to avoid
- Automatically redirecting based on the language you think someone speaks. Google recommends against it and suggests letting people choose.
- Translating word for word with a tool and publishing without review.
- Mixing languages on the same page, except for proper names.
Write, don’t translate
What sounds natural in Spanish sometimes sounds odd in English, and vice versa. Each version should read as if it was written in that language. The facts (hours, prices, services) must be identical in both.
Start with the language most of your customers speak, and make sure the other version is complete. A half-finished version looks worse than none.