
Benefits and Best Practices of a Multilingual Website
The Internet encompasses the entire globe, it’s true. However, not everyone speaks and understands the same language. In fact, nowadays we have become so diverse that it is not uncommon to find countries with more than one official language.
In the United States, for example, English is the official national language, but a large portion of the population speaks Spanish. Depending on what part of Canada you’re in, the people will speak English, French, or both. In Switzerland, people speak German, French or Italian, depending on where they live (within the same relatively small country). Hong Kong recognizes both English and Cantonese as official languages, and many of its residents speak both. These are just a few examples of how two or more languages can be prevalent within one country. In fact, nowadays, it’s quite rare to come across a country where several languages aren’t accepted or spoken. So why not take advantage of this well-known fact in order to expand your potential client base to a larger group of people? A multilingual website will certainly help you attract new clients, both locally and overseas.
Benefits of a Multilingual Website
Best Practices for a Multilingual Website
Help Google identify the language of the pages – simply add a snippet to differentiate the languages. An example of this…
www.inzonedesign.com/about
www.inzonedesign.com/es/about
www.inzonedesign.com/it/about
The “es” tells Google that the content of that page is in Spanish, while “it” tells Google that the content of that page is in Italian. In order to improve your multilingual site’s SEO, ideally you would want to translate the slugs for each language as well, so… www.inzonedesign.com/about www.inzonedesign.com/es/sobre-mi www.inzonedesign.com/it/chi-sono