Unlocking Multilingual SEO for Your Website
September 25, 2025
Every minute in 2025, Google processes over 9.5 million search queries. The average person makes three or four searches per day. This statistic aligns with the search engine’s day-to-day activity of 14 billion with an estimated search volume of over 5 trillion per year. While early predictions argued that artificial intelligence (AI) would reduce Google’s massive volume of yearly queries, so far the opposite appears to be true as users are actively exploring new online search options.
With trillions of daily page views, the search engine giant still dominates global market share but recently Google’s total volume fell to slightly below 90%. However, this may be due to evolving online user trends and more creative search engine results pages (SERPs). New layouts for both desktop and mobile devices are designed to provide answers to user queries more efficiently and even without the user’s pass-thru click to any of the actual websites displayed.
Although Google’s rollout of “mobile first indexing” started slowly a little more than half-a-dozen years ago, last summer the search engine announced that its algorithms would only crawl and index websites using the latest mobile Googlebot. What this means is that converting from the traditional desktop version is no longer optional. In fact, many sites that are inaccessible on mobile devices have been removed from Google’s primary search results.
What if your website isn’t mobile friendly?
About five years ago after Google’s initial effort to launch its mobile first indexing algorithm updates, the search engine began ranking indexed webpages using the website’s mobile version. Google was transparent about prioritizing to crawling and ranking content for more favorable search visibility. Quickly, almost three-fourths of active websites were accessible on a mobile device, which means the vast majority of your competitors today have both a desktop and mobile version.
Long-time search engine guru Barry Schwartz is a contributing editor to Search Engine Land that is owned by Semrush and he heads Search Engine Roundtable, one of the most popular SEM forums and a key source for real-time updates regarding the latest CORE changes. Schwartz recently explained that crawling of some desktop versions will continue, as the desktop Googlebot can still be used as the crawler to index product listings and Google job postings across the web.
For the most part, you can use the Basic Rule of Thumb that has you enter the domain URL for any website in question into an Android phone or iPhone, if it does not load, then it is likely not being crawled and indexed by mobile Googlebot. Moreover, anyone with access to the website’s Google Search Console can use the search engine’s URL Inspection Tool to ensure data is being properly rendered. In addition, schema markup is crucial code that adds “context to content” when bots process information.
How Search Works for Multilingual Websites
If you are new to multilingual online marketing, there a couple of options available, but each are designed to meet an organization’s unique messaging needs. In the spring of 2006, they launched Google Translate. After being selected as an early beta-tester, ProLingo installed the statistical machine translation (SMT) software that supports 243 languages. With today’s AI efforts, Google’s eventual goal is to include over a thousand languages. But, this option is now limited as the dynamic widget has been discontinued for commercial use.
Another option for company’s who need to expand their messaging and branding to multiple languages would be to clone their existing website, translate it to the language(s) of choice, and host each version on a subdomain, e.g. – spanish.[sitename].com. However, because search engines can easily mistake a subdomain (or subdirectory) version as duplicate content, this could harm SERP rankings and dilute the website’s authority. Nonetheless, when done correctly, tags can be used to identify the version of pages that are optimized regionally.
A multilingual SEO specialist and a human translator can implement the changes to allow users to see the best pages based on the language and dialect needed. But take note as this is a necessary step to avoid receiving a penalty for displaying duplicate content. Nowadays, the algorithms tend to avoid ranking any of the differing versions of the exact same multilingual content. So, SEO is more than just translating content, it is important to pay attention to how user’s search and the queries they enter in the locale you want to target.
Positioning Languages on Multilingual Sites
Fortunately, Google has laid out some best practices to boost on page SEO for multi-language websites, in order to generate more organic traffic to properly optimized multilingual versions of your most important messaging. For example, Amazon is a major global provider of the latest online shopping experience and can be changed by clicking a region’s flag icon near the website’s search bar. Amazon also operates many international websites independently, as each support a different set of languages for that country or region.
Google does recommend using different URLs for each language version of a given page rather than using cookies or modified browser settings to translate the content of the user’s selected page. There are, however, important technical considerations as machine translation is not perfect and online users always prefer interpretations with less errors and cultural accuracy, especially for sensitive or important information. Moreover, using a dynamic translation method like an old widget can hinder the page’s multilingual SEO.
Today, bots may not crawl and index poorly translated content. That means it is essential to include a human-review of all translated content, which can ensure the message or branding is correctly delivered. This is even more important for high-stakes applications, where if mistranslated or misunderstood, it could cause financial loss, legal liability, negative health outcomes, or threats to a consumer’s safety. But, beyond the direct harm related to poor translations, high-stake multilingual content with misinformation can severely affect a brand’s reputation.
Tips to make a multilingual site better...
Whether desktop or mobile Googlebot uses a variety of techniques to determine the language the user needs and the content language of the page being ranked. In fact, the visible content displayed on the webpage helps the algorithms match the query to the best results. Since Google automatically determines the user’s location, it helps in deciding the proper use and correct spelling of the same content. Some devices and most popular browsers, including Google Chrome, can also communicate the preferred language through a standard HTTP header.
Here are some tips for making a multilingual website work well for you:
- Use a single language per page for better user experience
- Use the same language for all elements (headers and menus)
- Use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling automatically
- Use the "notranslate" attribute to avoid auto-crawls
- Use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in conjunction with 301 redirects
- Use multilingual sitemaps optimized for each region and language
Avoid the use of side-by-side translations and do not rely on the automatic translation feature for delivering important information or brand messaging, as these can produce errors in grammar, context and cultural nuances that can quickly lead to misinterpretations. Instead, treat any machine translation or AI interpretation as a rough guide prior to publishing the final multilingual version of the page. Only through using a professional human translator for accuracy can you truly control the message’s impact on the user.
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Automatic translation using AI-powered applications can provide large amounts of research data, but for informational purposes only. For legal, business, medical, or marketing content, it is crucial to implement a human-in-the-loop approach to flag potential issues for review and to boost overall quality in delivering your organization’s message. After all, earning multi-lingual status isn’t magic. To learn more about ProLingo’s translation and multi-lingual interpretation services, contact a digital language specialist today at 800-287-9755.
