Jul 13, 2025·8 min
Multilingual Websites Made Simple: Add English & Spanish
Learn the simplest way to add English and Spanish to your website: pick the right URL structure, set up a language switcher, handle SEO, and launch smoothly.
Learn the simplest way to add English and Spanish to your website: pick the right URL structure, set up a language switcher, handle SEO, and launch smoothly.
Adding Spanish (or English) usually makes sense when you see clear signals: a growing share of visitors using that language, repeated sales requests from a specific market, or support tickets that drag on due to back-and-forth. Done well, localization can also reduce support load—when customers can self-serve in their preferred language, they file fewer “quick question” tickets.
A multilingual website isn’t just your pages run through translation. It includes:
If you only translate body copy, users still hit English-only menus, broken search, or forms they don’t trust. That feels unfinished.
Start with the pages that directly affect revenue and support. A solid first release often includes:
Nice-to-have items (blog archives, older press pages) can come later once the foundation is consistent.
Bilingual sites fail when one language stops getting updates. Assign clear ownership:
Pick a simple rule: when English changes, Spanish is updated within a set window (for example, 3–5 business days). That one decision prevents the “two sites drifting apart” problem.
Your URL structure is the “address system” for your two languages. Pick it early and stick to it—changing later can mean redirects, lost rankings, and broken shared links.
1) Subfolders (recommended for most sites):
/ or /en//es/2) Subdomains:
www.example.comes.example.com3) Separate domains:
example.comexample.esFor SEO and maintenance, subfolders tend to be the least complicated:
/es/ vs. non-/es/ traffic without stitching reports.Subdomains and separate domains aren’t “wrong”—they just add overhead. If your goal is a straightforward English/Spanish website translation, subfolders are often the most practical choice.
/es/..../es/). Your URL structure determines how easy that is.Decide whether Spanish URLs will be translated or not, and apply it everywhere:
/es/precios, /es/contacto/es/pricing, /es/contactEither is fine—what matters is consistency. Mixing approaches confuses users, editors, and reporting, and makes your multilingual website harder to maintain.
A bilingual site only feels “easy” if visitors can change languages without thinking. Your language switcher is a small UI element that quietly affects trust, conversions, and support requests.
Place a clear language selector in a consistent spot—typically the header (best for discovery) or the footer (acceptable if your header is crowded). If you’re using a menu, keep it near navigation so users don’t have to hunt.
Use plain language labels: English and Español. Avoid abbreviations like EN/ES unless space is truly tight.
Country flags are tempting, but language isn’t the same as country. A Spanish speaker might be in the U.S., and English is used in many countries. If you include flags at all, pair them with text (“English”, “Español”) so the meaning is unambiguous.
Once someone switches to Español, don’t make them do it again on every page.
This matters if you send users to both languages from ads, email, or social links.
Auto-redirecting based on browser language or IP can backfire: bilingual users, travelers, and VPN users often get the “wrong” language.
If you do suggest a language, keep it lightweight (a dismissible banner) and always provide a one-click way to switch back.
Finally, make the switcher accessible: it should be keyboard-friendly, readable on mobile, and clearly labeled (for example, “Language”).
If you only translate the visible page text, search engines may still get confused about which version to rank—especially when English and Spanish pages look similar. A few SEO basics make a big difference, and they’re mostly “set once, maintain forever.”
Add hreflang so Google understands which English page matches which Spanish page (and serves the right one by language and region).
At a minimum, each pair should reference each other:
/en/pricing should point to /es/precios/es/precios should point back to /en/pricingIf you have generic language versions (not country-specific), use en and es. If you target countries, you can use en-US, es-ES, es-MX, etc. Many sites also add an x-default version (often English) for users without a clear language match.
Canonical tags prevent duplicate-content problems, but they’re easy to misconfigure on multilingual sites.
Rule of thumb: each language page should canonical to itself.
Avoid pointing Spanish pages to English canonicals “because it’s the original.” That tells Google the Spanish page is not the preferred version, which can hurt Spanish visibility.
Search snippets and social previews are often driven by metadata, not page headings.
Make sure you translate and localize:
og:title, og:description) and Twitter card fieldsTip: Keep your brand name consistent, but adapt phrasing to what Spanish speakers actually search.
Help search engines discover every version:
/en/ and /es/ URLs in the same sitemap, orEither way, make sure new pages appear in both languages over time—missing or stale Spanish URLs are a common reason multilingual SEO underperforms.
Translating paragraphs is the obvious part. The “experience” is everything around the text—navigation, buttons, errors, formatting, and even assets. If those pieces stay in one language, your site feels unfinished and users lose confidence.
Start with navigation labels, CTAs, and repeated interface elements (header, footer, cookie banner, search, account menus). Then move to system messages: validation errors, empty states, success confirmations, and “loading” text.
This matters most on forms. A Spanish page with English field errors (“Please enter a valid email”) breaks trust and causes drop-offs. Make sure placeholders, helper text, and automated emails (like “Thanks for contacting us”) match the page language.
Screenshots, banners, infographics, and “text on image” promos often hide untranslated copy. You have two options:
If you can’t redo an image quickly, avoid embedding key info (prices, deadlines, instructions) inside the graphic.
Spanish needs full character support: accents (á, é, í, ó, ú), ñ, and inverted punctuation (¿ ¡). Confirm your fonts render these cleanly at every size—especially in buttons and menus where tight spacing can clip characters.
Pick formats that match your audience and use them consistently. Examples:
When these details align, your English/Spanish website feels truly bilingual—not just translated.
A bilingual site stays “simple” only if you can update it without chaos. The goal isn’t perfect process—it’s a repeatable path from new copy to published pages in both languages.
Create a living glossary that everyone uses—writers, translators, and reviewers. Include:
This avoids the classic problem where the same button reads “Empezar,” “Comenzar,” and “Iniciar” across the site.
Pick one approach and document it so it’s consistent:
A simple rule: anything that affects conversion or trust gets the most human attention.
Avoid “everyone reviews everything.” Use a small pipeline:
Draft → Review → Publish
Decide who signs off on:
Most bilingual sites fail quietly: English gets updated, Spanish doesn’t. Prevent drift by tracking what changed:
If you do this from day one, adding new pages later won’t turn into a scramble.
There are three common ways to ship an English/Spanish site: a CMS, a code-based build (often a static site generator), or a plugin layered onto what you already have. The “best” choice is usually the one that keeps translations organized and easy to update.
If you publish content regularly (blog posts, landing pages, help articles), a CMS that supports multiple locales is often the smoothest path. Look for features like per-language URLs, per-language SEO fields (title/description), and a clean editorial workflow.
What to watch for: make sure the CMS handles not just page text, but also navigation labels, buttons, and reusable components.
If your site is mostly marketing pages and you want speed and control, an SSG or framework-based setup can work well—as long as it has first-class i18n support.
The key rule: don’t hard-code English strings in templates. Centralize copy in translation files (for example, JSON/YAML) so the same component can render in Spanish without duplicating layouts.
Plugins can be a fast way to add Spanish to an existing site, especially on popular site builders and CMS platforms. They’re helpful when you need something working soon.
Tradeoffs to evaluate: whether the plugin creates clean URLs, lets you edit translations manually (not only machine translation), and supports SEO basics (metadata and language signals).
No matter the approach, store translations somewhere structured:
If you’re building (or rebuilding) the site rather than only translating it, it often helps to scaffold the language-aware routing, reusable UI strings, and SEO fields before you translate anything. Tools like Koder.ai can speed up that foundation: you can describe the desired URL structure (for example, /en/ and /es/), language switcher behavior, and i18n file layout in a chat-driven planning flow, then iterate quickly with snapshots/rollback as you validate UX and SEO details.
Even if you only need English and Spanish now, set conventions that scale: locale codes (en, es), repeatable URL rules, and a single source of truth for shared UI copy. That way, adding French later is an extension—not a rebuild.
A bilingual site isn’t only your homepage and pricing page. The moment someone signs up, forgets a password, or hits an error message, they’re no longer “browsing”—they’re trying to solve a problem. If those touchpoints are English-only, Spanish-speaking users often abandon.
Start with the materials that reduce support tickets and unblock customers quickly:
If you already have a help area, link to it from both languages using relative paths like /help. Same for contacting you at /contact.
Forms are where multilingual sites often break. It’s not enough to translate “Name” and “Email.” Make sure you localize:
Then test the full journey in both languages: submit every form, trigger common errors, and confirm what the user sees on the confirmation screen.
If you can support customers in Spanish, say so plainly and offer a Spanish contact option (a Spanish inbox, chat routing, or Spanish office hours). If you can’t yet, don’t hide it—set expectations on /contact and in your automated replies.
A simple approach: offer Spanish self-serve help content first, then add Spanish human support as volume grows.
A bilingual site can look “done” and still ship with small issues that confuse users or hurt SEO. A short pre-launch checklist helps you catch the problems that are expensive to fix later—especially once pages are indexed.
Spanish often runs longer than English, which can break layouts in places you won’t notice on a desktop preview.
If you can, test on a small phone screen and at least one large desktop width.
Users should never “fall into” the wrong language after clicking around.
Also test footers, breadcrumbs, and any “related articles” or “recommended services” modules.
Before launch, confirm search engines can understand the language relationship between pages.
Practical things to verify:
/sitemap.xml (or language-specific sitemaps) includes both languagesIf you have a staging environment, make sure it’s blocked from indexing while production is indexable.
Automated translation can be a starting point, but a human pass prevents credibility killers.
Focus on high-visibility pages first: homepage, pricing, top landing pages, and checkout/contact flows. Pay special attention to legal/claims language, currencies, dates, and form field instructions.
If you want a final safety net, do a “five-minute task test”: ask someone to find one key page in Spanish, switch to English, and submit a form—without help.
A bilingual site doesn’t have to launch all at once. A phased rollout lets you get real user feedback quickly, while keeping the workload manageable.
Begin with the pages that drive the most value—typically your homepage, top product/service pages, pricing, and contact. If your blog or resource library is large, translate only the highest-traffic posts first.
A practical approach is:
Let traffic guide you, not guesswork. If Spanish visitors are landing on one specific service page, move that page up the queue.
Set up reporting so you can compare English vs. Spanish performance side by side. At minimum, track:
If Spanish traffic is rising but conversions aren’t, check whether the Spanish pages have the same calls-to-action, trust signals, pricing clarity, and form behavior as the English pages.
After launch, use Google Search Console to watch for:
Catching these early prevents weeks of “why isn’t Spanish ranking?” confusion.
The fastest way to lose trust is having English pages that are current while Spanish pages feel outdated.
Create a simple maintenance schedule:
A small habit—like keeping a shared “translation update” checklist—prevents your English/Spanish website from slowly drifting out of sync.
Even a well-intentioned multilingual website can frustrate users (and confuse Google) when a few common details are missed. Here are the issues we see most often on an English/Spanish website—and how to fix them quickly.
The mistake: You detect a user’s location and immediately send them to /es or /en—with no way back. Travelers, bilingual users, VPN users, and people researching in another language get stuck.
Quick fix: Keep geolocation as a suggestion, not a forced redirect.
The mistake: Flags represent countries, not languages (Spanish is spoken in many places; English too). A lone flag also isn’t accessible for screen readers.
Quick fix: Use text labels: English / Español (optionally with flags as secondary decoration).
The mistake: The body copy is translated, but the SEO titles, meta descriptions, URL structure, form validation, 404 pages, and email confirmations stay in the original language.
Quick fix: Make a checklist for “everything that speaks.” Include:
The mistake: You publish English and Spanish pages, but search engines can’t reliably understand they’re alternatives. That can lead to the wrong language ranking or perceived duplication.
Quick fix: Implement hreflang between language versions and set canonicals correctly (usually self-referencing on each language page).
x-default where it makes sense (like a language selection page).These fixes don’t require a rebuild—just a clearer structure and a more complete website translation process.
Translate when you have clear demand signals, such as:
If you’re unsure, start with a small “Version 1” (homepage + pricing/contact) and measure conversions and support impact before translating everything.
“Translated” often means only the page body text was converted. “Multilingual” means the whole experience works in both languages, including:
If users still hit English-only UI or forms, the site feels unfinished and trust drops.
A strong V1 focuses on revenue and support first:
/contact, /demo, /signupPick owners and a simple SLA before you translate:
Then set a rule like: “When English changes, Spanish updates within 3–5 business days.” This prevents languages drifting out of sync.
Most sites should use subfolders:
/ or /en//es/Subfolders usually win because SEO signals stay on one domain, content management is simpler, and analytics segmentation is easy (e.g., path starts with /es/). Subdomains and separate domains can work, but add overhead.
Either approach can work—choose one and apply it everywhere:
/es/precios, /es/contacto/es/pricing, /es/contactConsistency matters more than the choice. Mixing styles makes navigation, reporting, and maintenance harder.
Make it obvious and predictable:
Avoid forced redirects by IP/browser; use a dismissible suggestion instead and always allow one-click switching back.
Implement the basics so search engines understand language equivalents:
Localize everything users click or rely on:
Also audit images that contain text (screenshots/banners). Replace with localized assets or move text into real HTML.
Run a fast checklist before indexing problems become expensive:
Do a quick end-to-end test: switch language, submit forms, trigger common errors, and verify confirmation screens and emails match the page language.
Leave nice-to-haves (old blog archives, legacy press pages) for later once the core is consistent.
/en/ and /es/ URLs (in one sitemap or separate ones)These are mostly “set once, maintain forever.”