How to Create a Multilingual Site With WordPress

How to Create a Multilingual WordPress Website: The Ultimate Guide for 2024

In today‘s global economy, having a multilingual website is essential for businesses looking to expand their reach and connect with customers worldwide. WordPress powers over 40% of websites on the internet, making it a top choice for building multilingual sites.

But figuring out how to translate your WordPress site and localize your content can seem overwhelming at first. Don‘t worry – by the end of this guide, you‘ll know everything you need to create a high-quality, SEO-optimized multilingual WordPress site that attracts international traffic and boosts global sales.

What is a multilingual website?

A multilingual website provides content in two or more languages. Visitors can choose their preferred language, usually via a language switcher, to view a translated version of the site adapted to their region and culture.

Why should you make your WordPress website multilingual? Here are some of the key benefits:

  1. Reach a wider global audience: Only 25% of internet users speak English. Providing content in multiple languages allows you to connect with the other 75% of potential customers.

  2. Increase international traffic: Translated versions of your site pages can rank in search engines for keywords in those languages, drastically expanding your organic search traffic.

  3. Improve user experience: 65% of consumers prefer content in their native language and 40% will not buy from websites in other languages. Translating your site makes global customers feel welcome.

  4. Grow global revenue: Localized content can increase conversions, especially for ecommerce. A Common Sense Advisory study found that 56% of consumers say information in their native language is more important than price.

  5. Gain competitive advantage: While many businesses still have English-only sites, offering multiple languages can differentiate your brand and help you capture global market share.

The Best WordPress Multilingual Plugins

The easiest way to translate your WordPress site is by using a translation plugin. Here are four of the best options that make managing multilingual content simple.

  1. Weglot

Weglot is a powerful, easy-to-use translation solution trusted by 50,000+ websites. Key features include:

  • Automatic translation: Translate your entire site with one click using machine translation. Content updates are detected and translated automatically.
  • Manual editing: Edit machine translations yourself or collaborate with team members and professional translators directly in Weglot.
  • Effortless setup: No coding required. Just choose your target languages and configure how the language switcher displays.
  • SEO-optimized: Translated pages are indexed in search engines with dedicated URLs to attract traffic in each language.
  • Customizable: Style your language switcher, manually translate images and videos, exclude specific blocks from translation, and more.

Pricing: Starts at $9.90/month for up to 10,000 words on one language. Enterprise plans available.

[Include screenshot of Weglot dashboard]
  1. WPML

WPML is a WordPress multilingual plugin that‘s been around since 2007. It supports translation management for over 40 languages. Key features include:

  • Flexible translation: Choose which content to translate, translate it yourself, or send jobs to translators.
  • SEO-ready: Translated content includes hreflang tags, dedicated URLs, and translatable metadata.
  • WooCommerce integration: Translate products, categories, and checkout with the WooCommerce Multilingual add-on.
  • Multisite compatible: Run multilingual WordPress multi-site installations with separate domains per language.
  • String translation: Translate WordPress strings, plugins and themes.

Pricing: Starts at $29 for a single site, one year of support and updates.

[Include screenshot of WPML String Translation screen]
  1. TranslatePress

TranslatePress is another user-friendly translation plugin that works well for simple WordPress sites. Key features:

  • Visual translation: Translate content directly from the front-end of your site with a visual interface. See translations in real-time.
  • Automatic translation: Choose from Google Translate or DeepL machine translation integrations.
  • Customizable language switcher: Display languages as text, flags, or in a dropdown.
  • Translator accounts: Allow employees or external translators to translate content on the front-end.
  • SEO support: Translatable page slugs, hreflang tags, and dedicated URLs for each language.

Pricing: Free version available. Premium starts at €79/year for one site.

[Include screenshot of TranslatePress visual translation editor]
  1. Polylang

Polylang is a free, developer-friendly translation plugin for WordPress. It‘s more hands-on and technical than the others but offers lots of customization. Key features:

  • Unlimited languages: Translate your site into as many languages as you want.
  • Separate content: Translations are managed as separate posts, pages or terms for full control.
  • Theme and plugin compatibility: Gutenberg, Custom Post Types, Custom Taxonomies, REST API, and more.
  • Customizable language switcher: Display as a list, dropdown, flags, and place it wherever you want using a shortcode or widget.
  • WooCommerce compatible: Translate products and store pages.

Pricing: Free. Pro version with more advanced features like multi-domain support starts at €99/year.

[Include screenshot of Polylang Languages admin screen]

How to Use Weglot to Translate Your WordPress Website

Now that you know some of the best translation plugins, let‘s walk through how to use Weglot to create a multilingual WordPress site.

  1. Install the Weglot plugin from the WordPress plugin directory
  2. Create a Weglot account and get your API key
  3. Configure your target languages in the Weglot settings
  4. Customize the appearance and placement of the language switcher
  5. Run the first automatic translation of your site
  6. Edit the translations in Weglot if needed
  7. Optionally order professional translators in Weglot
  8. Translate your images, metadata, and SEO content
  9. Check that your multilingual site pages are being indexed by Google

See the full step-by-step Weglot tutorial here: [link]

Multilingual SEO Best Practices

For your translated content to attract global search traffic, you need to implement multilingual SEO best practices:

  • Use dedicated URLs for each language version of a page (example.com/en/, example.com/es/)
  • Add hreflang tags to specify the language and region of each version for search engines
  • Translate metadata like page titles, descriptions, and image alt text
  • Allow all language versions of your site to be indexed (avoid the noindex meta tag)
  • Build backlinks to your translated content to boost their authority
  • Localize content for keywords and phrases used in different regions

For more tips, see The Complete Guide to Multilingual SEO in 2024.

Localizing Content for a Global Audience

Translation is important, but localization goes a step further to adapt your website‘s content and messaging for different target markets. This might include:

  • Reviewing translations to ensure they sound native and reflect local culture
  • Updating images and graphics to be relevant for each region
  • Converting currencies, dates, times, units of measure, etc. to local standards
  • Creating market-specific content and offers based on shopping preferences
  • Providing local payment options, shipping methods, and customer support

The Most Important Languages to Translate Your Website

There are over 7,000 languages in the world. So which ones should you focus on translating your WordPress site into?

When prioritizing languages for translation, consider:

  • Where your existing website traffic comes from
  • The size of the economies and online spending in different markets
  • Languages spoken in your target regions (for example, Spanish has 559 million speakers worldwide)
  • English proficiency levels in target markets
  • Languages your competitors offer (or don‘t yet offer) to identify gaps

According to WordBank, the top internet languages after English are:

  1. Chinese (1.1 billion users)
  2. Spanish (344 million)
  3. Arabic (226 million)
  4. Portuguese (171 million)
  5. Indonesian / Malaysian (158 million)
  6. French (127 million)
  7. Japanese (119 million)
  8. Russian (108 million)

For a granular look at internet use by country, see Internet World Stats.

Machine Translation vs Human Translation

Machine translation services like Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and DeepL can provide a quick and affordable jumping-off point for translating your WordPress site.

However, machine translations often sound unnatural and inaccurate. For the best quality translations that will resonate with native-speaking visitors, it‘s important to have professional human translators review and refine the localized content.

Look for professional language service providers that specialize in WordPress website translation. They should be native speakers with subject matter expertise who can ensure your translated content sounds fluent and conveys your brand voice.

Many WordPress translation plugins like Weglot and WPML allow you to order and manage professional translators directly in their platforms. You can also find skilled freelance translators on marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.

Translating Images, Videos and Other Media

High-quality multilingual websites go beyond just translating text. Consider localizing your images, videos, PDFs, and other media as well.

For images, you can use a plugin like Weglot to serve different featured images for each language. Translating the image file names and alt text also boosts your multilingual SEO.

For videos, you may need to provide subtitles or dub the audio track into different languages. There are services that specialize in multilingual video translation and localization.

PDFs and other downloadable content should also be translated into each target language and linked from the localized versions of your site.

Maintaining Your Multilingual WordPress Website

Creating a multilingual site is not a one-time project. To be effective, you need processes in place to keep translations up-to-date over time.

Schedule regular translation reviews to ensure new content is getting localized and existing translations still read well.

Consider localizing social media posts, ad campaigns, and other off-site content as well for a cohesive global customer experience.

Monitor your web analytics to see how much traffic and engagement your translated content receives. This can help inform where to focus more translation efforts.

Finally, collect feedback from global customers on their experiences with your multilingual site. Do they have suggestions for how to improve the localized content? Providing a feedback loop shows your commitment to serving each target audience.

Brands Winning at WordPress Multilingual Sites

Need inspiration? Check out these WordPress sites getting multilingual right:

  • Airbnb: Offers 62 languages, with localized images, currencies and booking options for each market
  • TED: Provides subtitles for TED talk videos in over 100 languages
  • Spotify: Translates its music streaming site into 62 languages, with localized featured artists and playlists
  • Asana: The productivity tool offers its site and help documentation in 8 languages
  • King Arthur Baking Company: Translates recipes, ingredients and products for different markets

Wrapping Up

Making your WordPress website multilingual is a smart business move in our increasingly globalized world. By providing translated, localized content, you can attract new customers, increase global sales, and gain an edge on less accessible competitors.

Using a WordPress multilingual plugin is the easiest way to manage translations. Choose one like Weglot that offers both automatic and human translation capabilities, and a visual interface to customize your language switcher.

Remember to implement multilingual SEO best practices so your translated content can rank in search engines and drive more global traffic.

Focus first on translating your site into the languages spoken by your target audiences. Consider their cultural preferences and online behaviors to truly localize the customer experience.

Keep your multilingual WordPress site updated and collecting customer feedback over time. The initial setup is just the first step in a long-term international growth strategy.

By following this guide and investing in a quality multilingual site, your WordPress website will be ready to welcome the world in 2024 and beyond.

Similar Posts