Creating a multilingual website can be confusing for website developers and users. Many questions and misconceptions get raised when first figuring out how to make your website multilingual, from technicalities to search engine optimization (SEO) and site management.

Recently, I’ve made some of my sites multilingual and have gone through the complete process and tried different methods and tools. In this guide, I’ll try to clear all your doubts regarding creating a multilingual website successfully.

But before diving deep let’s start from the basics

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What is a multilingual website
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A multilingual website serves Chief VP Marketing Officer Email Lists the same content in multiple languages.

According to the region or browser preference settings, it can automatically redirect to a language. Or the user can change the language manually.

For example,  is a multilingual website serving content in four different languages — English, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish.

If a user from the USA visits  then it will serve that user with English content according to the user’s region. But if someone from Japan visits or the same page as the US visitor), then that Japanese user will automatically get the content in the Japanese language.

But if the Japanese user wants to read the website in English

steps to creating a multilingual website
Here are the steps you need to follow to create your multilingual website.

First of all, you need to decide the languages into which you’ll translate your website. Choosing the languages to add to your website depends on many factors like the type of business, geo (audience) target, budget, and resources.

For example, if you want to reach more possible customers, then simply selecting the most popular languages is not the solution. Instead, find the biggest markets to expand your business.

Check your Google Analytics to find the top countries and languages your visitors/customers are coming from.

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Also, you can run some ad campaigns on Google Adwords to find the best countries and languages to translate your content.
If you select many languages to translate your content, then it will take more budget and team members (writers, customer support, to translate that content and manage the website.

If you have limited resources and budget, you should translate into a few languages in the beginning. Because the quality of translation also matters.