If you run a business in Spain and English is your first language, your website probably started in English, yet your customers include Spanish locals, English-speaking residents and holidaymakers. This guide covers when a bilingual site pays off, how to organise it so that Google understands each version, what to translate and which mistakes to avoid, citing Google's official documentation with the date of the version we checked.
When does a second language pay off?
When some of your actual customers search, compare and decide in another language. For English speakers in Spain, the question often comes the other way round: your site is in English because that is your language, while your Spanish customers search in Spanish and struggle to find you.
Then there are English-speaking residents: British, Irish or Scandinavian people on the Costa del Sol who manage in Spanish day to day but would rather read in English before hiring a builder or an accountant. Tourism counts too: a restaurant gets visitors searching on their phones, in their own language. And in regions with a co-official language, such as Catalonia, the Valencian Community or Galicia, a version in that language signals closeness to local customers.
When is it not worth it?
When nobody will read it: if your customers are all English-speaking residents, or all local Spaniards, a second version just adds pages to maintain. And when you cannot serve customers in that language: a polished Spanish site creates an expectation that falls flat if nobody can answer in Spanish on the phone. Offer the languages in which you can welcome customers, quote and sort out problems.
Machine translation or versions written by a person?
Machine translation makes a decent first draft, but your website is where customers decide whether to trust you. One mistranslated technical term or an awkward sentence is enough to make a Spanish customer hesitate. A person also adapts examples, payment methods and bank holidays.
What does Google say? Its spam policies on Google Search Central, last updated on 28 August 2026, define scaled content abuse as generating many pages mainly to manipulate search rankings rather than to help users, no matter how the content is created. Among the examples is creating many pages from other content through automated transformations, translation included, where little value is provided to users. Its guidance on AI-generated content, last updated on 10 December 2025, makes the same point.
So translating your own site is not forbidden: Google targets volume without value. The real risk is losing the customer's trust.
How should a multilingual site be organised?
Google Search Central's guide to managing multi-regional and multilingual sites, last updated on 10 December 2025, sets out the basics. Each language needs its own URL, rather than swapping the text with cookies or browser settings, otherwise Google might not find all your versions. The simplest option is usually one subfolder per language, such as /en/ or /es/, which the guide describes as easy to set up and low maintenance.
Do not redirect visitors automatically based on the language you assume they speak: Google advises against it because it can stop people seeing every version. Add a visible language switcher in the header that leads to the same page in the other language. And keep one language per page: Google works out the language from the visible content, not from the lang attribute or the URL.
What is hreflang, in plain English?
It is an invisible tag that tells Google which other-language versions each page has, so it can show each person the right one. Google Search Central's documentation on localised versions of your pages, last updated on 21 September 2026, sets the rules. Each version must list itself as well as all the others; if two pages do not point to each other, Google ignores the tags. Codes follow the ISO 639-1 standard, such as en, es, fr or ca, with an optional region such as en-GB; reserved codes such as UK have no effect. The x-default value marks the fallback page for other languages.
Also, localised versions are only treated as duplicates if the main content is left untranslated: translating the menu is not enough.
What must be translated, and how do you keep it in sync?
You need not translate old blog posts, but customers must be able to complete the whole journey in their language: what you offer, what it costs, how to contact you and what you do with their data.
| Page | What to adapt | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Services | Terms the customer recognises | Translating jargon word for word |
| Prices | Same rates and terms everywhere | One version with old prices |
| Contact | Form, confirmation and opening hours | Automatic reply in one language only |
| Legal pages | Legal notice, privacy and cookies | Untranslated cookie banner |
| FAQ | Each audience's own questions | Copying the same questions |
Better not to link to an untranslated page than to show it half translated.
Keep the versions in sync too: when you change a price, your opening hours or a service, do it in every language at once, or the Spanish version will keep showing last year's rates.
Do people search with the same words in every language?
No. Translating keywords is not the same as researching them. An English-speaking resident might type English speaking electrician followed by their town, while a Spanish customer searches for electricista with the name of their neighbourhood. A tourist searches for what they want to do, not for the technical name of your service.
Type your service into Google in each language and look at the autocomplete suggestions and related searches. If you have a site, the Performance report in Google Search Console shows the real queries that bring you visitors.
How do languages work on your Google Business Profile?
According to Google's guidelines for representing your business on Google, in the Business Profile Help Centre (checked on 28 September 2026), the name must be your real-world business name, and repeating it in several languages or scripts is not allowed, even if your shop sign does. The Help Centre article on editing your Business Profile describes a single description field, with no mention of a version per language.
Write the description in your customers' main language, link to your site in that language and reply to each review in the language it was written in.
Which mistakes should you avoid?
Flags for languages. A flag stands for a country, not a language: English is not only British and Spanish is not only spoken in Spain. Write the name of each language in that language: English, Español, Français.
Half-translated pages. An English menu over Spanish body text confuses visitors and Google, which works out the language from the visible content. If a page is not translated yet, do not link to it.
Browser translation as the only option. It creates no page that Google can index in another language, can mangle the names of your services and does not translate your emails or quotes.
Forgotten forms and emails. The visitor writes in English and gets a confirmation in Spanish, or the cookie banner exists in one language only. Check the form, confirmation, automatic email, pre-filled WhatsApp message and legal pages.
A multilingual website pays off when your customers really use those languages and you can serve them in each one. WebAutonomos builds websites in up to 4 languages at no extra cost, chosen from Spanish, English, French, Catalan, Valencian, Galician and Basque, and writes each version itself. The one monthly change included applies across all languages. It costs 15 € a month with no setup fee and no lock-in, or 349 € paid once for the same services, with hosting, SSL, daily backups, maintenance and legal pages included. You get a personalised demo in under 24 hours and only pay once you have approved it.