Your website has seen success in English-speaking regions. That’s great!
Now, you’re ready to take things even further.
Why focus on just one area when you could go international? This is where SEO comes in.
You have to do more than professionally translate your content—you also need to optimize it to broaden your customer base.
When you work on your website’s search engine optimization, one of the main focuses is bringing more traffic to your site.
If your website isn’t multilingual, only so many people will be able to understand its content.
Broaden the number of languages on your site to extend your reach.
But how do you grow your business without losing your balance?
What if you put all the work and money into making your website multilingual-friendly, only to get very little traffic?
It takes more than just translating your content to make a successful multilingual website.
You need to implement the following key strategies in your SEO to help your international website take off:
Research the Market
You need to adapt your marketing strategy with help of web design and digital marketing agency to suit the location that you’re targeting.
When you optimize your title tags, you may know how to write one that will connect with readers that speak English, but you’ve got to think about the big picture.
Different styles and phrases will be more successful in other languages.
Find out which keywords on your website are helping you rank. Then, look at what their equivalent might be in another language.
Usually, it isn’t a direct translation of the original keyword.
What are people searching for in your targeted location? You need to find these high-volume terms to tap into those markets.
Google offers a free keyword planner to help you find these keywords.
It’s also a good idea to consult a localization service that specializes in SEO that can help you ensure your website is seen and appreciated by your target audience.
Use a Translation Service
When you’re converting content from one language to another, it might be tempting to copy and paste it into Google Translate.
Unfortunately, this won’t cut it because there are too many nuances to the meaning of a sentence.
If your content is translated poorly, you are putting your brand’s reputation in danger.
You risk being misconstrued, or even offensive. This isn’t the type of task that you want to leave up to a machine.
All your efforts to make your website multilingual will be squandered if users can’t understand your content!
Native language speakers can tell the difference between a text that’s been poorly machine translated and one that’s translated by an experienced bilingual translator.
Instead, consider the website translation services at BeTranslated, and keep your business image professional.
This investment will be worth your while when you can cater your content to speakers of many languages.
Add Hreflang Tags to Your Site Code
When you translate your existing content, you want to avoid making duplicate pages; that might cause your rankings to drop in search results.
So, should you simply add the translated content to the original page? The answer is no.
This makes for a confusing user experience; the reader would be able to understand the article, but not the navigation links on the side.
This is where hreflang tags come in. For search engines to understand what language or location your page is intended for, you need to tell it, and you can do so using hreflang tags.
Basically, it’s an HTML tag that signals to search engines which language each page uses—hreflang tags are essential for websites with multiple languages.
They show Google that your page in another language is not duplicate content. It’s a piece of code that looks like this:
hreflang= “(insert language and location here; for example, en-au)”
Add these tags to your sitemap or the header of a page. If you have a page that’s meant for multiple areas, add multiple tags to reflect that.
Remember, these tags apply to countries, not entire regions (You can’t target Europe, but you can target France or Germany, for example).
If you want to give it a shot, try this hreflang generator.
Implement Schema Markup
Schema markup is a type of structured data that helps search engines and AI tools better understand the content and context of your website.
Adding schema markup to your multilingual website gives search engines and AI tools clear information about each page, including its language, subject, author, business information, and FAQ content.
Implementing schema offers two major benefits in today’s search landscape.
First, it increases your chances of standing out in Google’s search results through rich snippets—like review stars, breadcrumbs, FAQs, and event details.
Second, and even more critical for the future, schema markup helps your content get recognized and accurately summarized in Google AI Overview and large language model (LLM) search engines, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.
AI-powered search engines rely on structured data to quickly identify trusted sources and pull relevant information for users’ questions.
If your website uses schema markup, you’re more likely to be featured or cited in AI-generated answers, summaries, or overviews—especially for complex multilingual content that requires clarity about language, location, and expertise.
For multilingual websites, consider adding these types of schema:
- Article or BlogPosting – Describes your content, author, publish date, and headline.
- Organization – Shares your company details, logo, and contact info.
- BreadCrumbList – Clarifies your site structure for better navigation and rich snippets.
- FAQPage – Helps your Q&A appear in both search and AI assistant results.
- LocalBusiness – Specifies details for region-specific content or services.
To get started, use free tools like TechnicalSEO Schema Markup Generator or consult your web developer to implement JSON-LD code in your site’s head section.
Once added, test your schema with Google’s Rich Results Test to confirm it’s valid and visible to search engines and AI tools.
As AI-driven discovery becomes the norm, properly implemented schema markup gives your multilingual website a major edge—helping you appear not just in classic search, but also in the fast-growing world of AI-powered answers and recommendations.
Build Links in Local Areas
With any SEO campaign, there’s a significant focus on link building.
If you’ve been working on your site’s SEO for some time, then you’ve probably got a good number of links from other English websites.
However, if you want to rank internationally, you need international links. That means creating content for other websites that use the same language you’re targeting.
You’ll need to write guest posts for other sites in the language that they use, as well as conduct outreach.
It’s going to be a bit of work, and a lot of back and forth with your translation service, but the payout will be worth it—link building is one of the most important ranking factors.
The Takeaway
If you want to expand your brand to other areas of the world, and reach customers who speak other languages, then you’ll need a multilingual SEO strategy.
The four above tips can get you started on updating your site code, blog posts, and outreach campaigns so that your website ranks in different locations.
There’s just one thing you need to tie it all together: a professional translator to convert your content.
Here at BeTranslated our team of talented translators specialize in a wide range of language pairs, including European languages like German, Asian languages such as Korean, and many more.
In addition to our translators, BeTranslated’s experienced project managers are here to answer all your question as they guide you through the process.
For more information or a free, no-obligation quote contact us today.
