Skip to main content

Need a multilingual WordPress site? This article dives into setting up WordPress multi-language functionality, focusing on top plugins like WPML and TranslatePress, and optimizing SEO for a global audience. Quickly turn your site into a worldwide platform with straightforward tips and essential steps for international engagement.

Key Takeaways

  • A multilingual WordPress site enhances global reach, user experience, and SEO by providing content in multiple languages, thus opening new markets and improving visibility and traffic.
  • Choosing the right multilingual plugin like WPML, Polylang, Weglot, or TranslatePress is essential, as each offers unique features such as automatic translations, ease of use, or compatibility with themes and plugins.
  • Properly setting up, managing, and updating a multilingual WordPress site includes adding languages, configuring language switchers, translating content, optimizing for SEO with localized content, and regularly updating plugins for site performance and security.

Understanding the Importance of a WordPress Multilingual Site

Global Reach

A multilingual WordPress site is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance your global reach. Offering content in multiple languages opens the doors to new markets, allowing you to:

  • Reach users in their preferred language
  • Expand your audience
  • Decrease bounce rates
  • Enhance conversion rates
  • Gain a competitive edge

Moreover, a multilingual WordPress site also contributes to improving SEO. The benefits include:

  • Increased visibility of your pages and images in Google search results across different languages
  • Bolstering your site’s position in search engine rankings
  • Broadening your site’s reach to a global audience
  • Driving increased website traffic

Global Reach

Creating a multilingual WordPress site is akin to opening virtual offices in different parts of the world. It facilitates communication with users across various countries and regions, enhancing your website’s global reach. For instance, brands like Olay Skincare and Netflix have broadened their global reach by employing multilingual websites, proving that language diversity can significantly boost a brand’s global presence.

However, it’s not just about the number of languages; it’s about the choice of languages. Offering content in the most widely spoken languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English, allows you to tap into an estimated market size worth USD 26.6 billion.

Enhanced User Experience

A multilingual site offers more than a global reach; it significantly enhances user experience. Providing content in the user’s native language helps establish trust and credibility. This clear and precise communication can broaden audience reach, decrease bounce rates, and improve conversion rates.

The user experience on multilingual sites can be enhanced by:

  • Using dedicated URLs
  • Applying hreflang tags
  • Maintaining one language per page
  • Providing clear navigation
  • Optimizing for mobile devices
  • Translating all content

Ensuring a consistent user experience across all language versions of your site can significantly impact conversion rates.

Improved SEO

Multilingual sites that offer content in multiple languages can significantly enhance SEO. Focusing on specific languages and regions can boost organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.

Furthermore, website localization can enhance SEO by giving a better user experience to local users and boosting website visibility for new users. With proper localization, you can tailor your content to meet your target audience’s unique cultural, linguistic, and regional preferences, thereby boosting your site’s position on search engine results pages.

Choosing the Best WordPress Multilingual Plugin

Choosing the Best Multilingual Plugin for Your WordPress Site

With so many multilingual plugins available, choosing the right one can be overwhelming. The key lies in understanding your specific needs and the unique features that each plugin offers.

Let’s explore some of the most popular WordPress multilingual plugins: WPML and TranslatePress. WPML offers the ability to incorporate multiple languages in a single installation, diverse translation methods, high-quality automatic translations, control over translation workflow, and tools for translating themes, plugins, and navigation elements.

On the other hand, TranslatePress:

  • Provides a visual translation interface for direct front-end translation
  • Supports translations of shortcodes, forms, and page builders
  • It is compatible with any theme or plugin.

WPML

WPML is a popular multilingual plugin that provides:

  • Seamless content translation
  • Facilitates multilingual website creation
  • Language management
  • Addition of new languages
  • Provision for language switching
  • Comprehensive translation of all website elements

WPML offers the following features:

  • Supports both automatic and manual translations
  • Allows users to select the most suitable translation method for their requirements
  • Designed to be compatible with every WordPress theme and plugin

This ensures that your site functions effectively without any compatibility issues.

Polylang

Polylang is another user-friendly multilingual plugin that enables easy creation of a multilingual site. It provides a seamless process for adding new languages to your website and manually translating your posts and pages.

Moreover, Polylang’s language switcher can be customized to enable links to translations of the current page or, if untranslated, to the front page in the selected language. Additionally, the names in the language switcher can be customized by modifying the full name of the language in the Polylang settings.

Weglot

Designed primarily for e-commerce and SaaS companies, Weglot provides a single dashboard to manage translations and offers dedicated URLs for each language.

Weglot’s primary features include:

  • A code-free installation process
  • An automatic translation workflow using machine translation
  • Options to edit translations, ensuring that the translated content is automatically displayed.

TranslatePress

TranslatePress is a non-technical plugin that enables users to translate their entire WordPress site, including:

  • themes
  • plugins
  • SEO metadata
  • social media information

TranslatePress offers a streamlined and less technical approach to establishing a multilingual site compared to other alternatives.

Furthermore, TranslatePress provides a manual and visual translation interface and can translate any part of a WordPress plugin, including gettext strings and user-generated content.

Setting Up Your Multilingual WordPress Site

Setting Up Your Multilingual WordPress Site

Now that you know the importance of a multilingual WordPress site and have chosen a plugin that suits your needs, the next step is setting up your multilingual WordPress site. This involves adding languages, configuring the language switcher, and translating content.

Incorporating multiple languages into your WordPress site involves setting your site’s primary content language under Settings → General → Site Language. Following this, you can install a plugin such as TranslatePress to include any additional secondary languages you wish to offer on your site.

Adding Languages

Adding new languages to your site is crucial in creating a multilingual WordPress site. Whether using WPML, Polylang, Weglot, or TranslatePress, each plugin offers a straightforward method to add new languages.

However, it’s not just about adding languages but also about choosing the right ones. Focusing on the languages your target audience speaks ensures that your content is accessible and relevant to most of your visitors.

Configuring the Language Switcher

A key component of any multilingual site is the language switcher. This tool lets visitors switch between languages easily, enhancing the user experience.

Whether using WPML or TranslatePress, each plugin offers a unique way to configure the language switcher. For instance, with WPML, you can customize your options under WPML → Languages. TranslatePress allows you to configure the language switcher under Appearance » Menus.

Translating Content

Now that you’ve added languages and set up your language switcher, the next step is translating your content. Translation can be done manually, automatically, or using both methods.

For manual translations, you can use the WordPress Editor. In contrast, you can use plugins like TranslatePress or machine translation services such as Google Cloud Translation, DeepL Translator, and Google Translate for automatic translations.

Optimizing Your Multilingual Site for SEO

Optimizing Your Multilingual Site for SEO

Beyond setting up a multilingual site, optimising it for SEO is essential. This includes:

  • Using dedicated URLs for each language
  • Localizing content to cater to the cultural differences and preferences of your target audience
  • Focusing on the most common languages in your target market.

Targeting specific languages and regions significantly improves your site’s SEO. In addition, localizing your content can boost your site’s position on search engine results pages and increase website traffic.

Dedicated URLs

Dedicated URLs are separate sites used for each language version of your website. They help search engines and users identify the language of your content, enhancing your site’s SEO.

The process of creating dedicated URLs depends on the plugin you’re using. However, the principle remains the same: to generate a unique URL for each language through subdirectories to assist search engines in directing visitors to the most relevant version of your page.

Localized Content

Localizing content is essential in SEO for a multilingual WordPress website. By localizing content, you can cater to your target audience’s unique cultural, linguistic, and regional preferences, thereby enhancing your site’s position on search engine results pages.

Localizing content goes beyond simple translation. It involves:

  • Adapting your content to different locales, languages, or local markets
  • Translating the content into the target language
  • Making necessary adjustments to ensure cultural relevance and appropriateness for the target audience

Focusing on Target Languages

Focusing on the most common languages in your target market can help you efficiently create a multilingual website. By setting a default language and focusing on these languages, you can cater to most of your audience, enhancing user experience and improving your site’s SEO.

To identify the most common languages for a target market, it’s recommended to:

  1. Research popular audiences
  2. Segment to connect with different markets
  3. Use competitor analysis, keyword, and SEO tools to determine the best languages and regions.

Managing and Updating Your Multilingual WordPress Site

Managing and Updating Your Multilingual WordPress Site

Once your multilingual WordPress site is operational, regular management and updates are necessary for maintaining the optimal performance of WordPress sites. This process encompasses monitoring translations, outsourcing translation services, and plugin updates.

Regularly monitoring translations can ensure accuracy and consistency across your multilingual site. On the other hand, outsourcing translation services can provide high-quality translations while keeping your plugins updated, ensuring compatibility with the latest WordPress updates and maintaining optimal site performance.

Monitoring Translations

Monitoring translations regularly is vital for maintaining accuracy and consistency across your multilingual site. By using tools like:

  • Weglot
  • WPML
  • Polylang
  • Lokalise
  • Lingotek

You can effectively monitor translations on your WordPress site.

Moreover, maintaining consistency of translations across a multilingual WordPress site involves:

  • Using the same termbase and translation memory for all content
  • Following established procedures for language selection
  • Setting up translation
  • Editing the language switcher
  • Editing the translations

Outsourcing Translation Services

Outsourcing translation services can provide the following benefits:

  • High-quality translations
  • No need to invest in your own translation team
  • Access to professional translators or agencies
  • Accurate and high-quality translations

When selecting a translation agency, it’s important to consider factors such as:

  • Accurate translations and cultural sensitivity
  • Additional services like localization and transcreation
  • Technology and tools for efficient project management
  • Expertise and qualifications of the agency
  • Technical capabilities
  • Pricing
  • Turnaround time

Keeping Plugins Updated

Keeping your multilingual plugins updated is crucial to ensure compatibility with the latest WordPress updates and maintain optimal site performance. Neglecting to update WordPress plugins can lead to a range of risks, including:

  • website crashes
  • potential loss of personal or customer information
  • website defacement
  • slower website response times

Therefore, it’s recommended that you update your plugins regularly. This can be done by navigating to the Plugins » Installed Plugins page within your site’s dashboard and clicking the ‘Update Available’ link.

Summary

Creating a multilingual WordPress site can significantly enhance your global reach, improve user experience, and boost SEO. By choosing the right multilingual plugin, setting up your multilingual WordPress site, optimizing it for SEO, and regularly managing and updating your site, you can cater to a broader audience and create a seamless, personalized user experience. So, are you ready to go global with your WordPress site?

Frequently Asked Questions

Does WordPress have multi-language support?

Yes, WordPress has multi-language support through the use of plugins and add-ons. This allows you to create a multilingual site by installing the necessary tools and translating the content.

How do I add two languages to WordPress?

To add two languages to WordPress, you can use the TranslatePress plugin and choose the languages you want to use. Then, translate your content and set up a language switcher. This will allow you to offer your WordPress site in multiple languages.

How do I make my WordPress site multilingual without plugins?

To make your WordPress site multilingual without plugins, you can set up WordPress Multisite, create separate sites for each language, configure them, and add content to each site. This allows you to manage multiple language versions of your site without using additional plugins.

Which is the best multilingual plugin for WordPress?

We recommend using WPML, as it is one of WordPress’s most popular and widely compatible multilingual translation plugins. It has proven to be a reliable choice for many users.

What are the benefits of a multilingual WordPress site?

Creating a multilingual WordPress site can help you expand your global reach, enhance user experience, and improve SEO.

Wesley Cude

Wesley Cude is the Founder of Cude Design and previously established The CBD Supplier, which he recently sold. A seasoned remote worker since 2013, he splits his time between London and Lisbon. Wesley is a driven entrepreneur with a keen focus on SEO.