One site, several languages:
each one findable in its own market
A multilingual site that gets hreflang wrong shows a German searcher the English page, or worse, has Google treat each language as duplicate content competing against itself. We built our own site in ten languages this way: one shared slug per piece of content, correct hreflang pairs, and language-specific keywords rather than a straight translation of the English SEO.
What it is
A multilingual site serves the same content in more than one language with clean URLs, a working language switcher, and hreflang tags that tell search engines which page is the equivalent of which, in which language, so a searcher in each market finds the right version instead of the wrong one or a 50-50 mix of both.
When you need it (and when you do not)
It earns its cost the moment you have real customers or search volume in more than one language and want each market to actually rank, not just have a page that technically exists in that language. A real estate project in Montenegro needed exactly this, selling to buyers across five languages, and the site’s hreflang setup is part of why each language version shows up in its own market’s search results rather than competing with the others.
It is the wrong tool if you only need a one-off translated page for a specific campaign; a single page with a manual link to the translation does not need a full architecture decision. And if your traffic is overwhelmingly one language with a tiny trickle in others, the ROI on building full hreflang infrastructure for that trickle is genuinely questionable, we will tell you if that is your situation.
How we build it
The first decision is URL structure: a subfolder like /de/ is simplest to run on one server and is what we use most often, a subdomain or separate ccTLD can make sense for a brand running very different campaigns per market but adds hosting and maintenance overhead. Once that is set, every piece of content gets one shared slug across languages, so the English, German and Thai versions of the same page all resolve to a predictable, matching URL and the hreflang pairs can be generated automatically rather than maintained by hand, where they inevitably drift out of sync.
Content is not machine-translated and left alone: we do keyword research per language, since the German search term for a service is rarely a direct translation of the English one, and a page that reads fine in German but targets the wrong keyword still will not rank. The language switcher lands on the equivalent page in the new language, not the homepage, which sounds obvious and is still one of the most common multilingual bugs we find in audits.
For languages that read right to left, we build the layout to support it from the template level rather than bolting it on after, since mirroring a layout correctly touches more than just text direction.
What to watch
Hreflang is unforgiving of inconsistency: a tag on one language version pointing to a URL that has since moved, or missing on just one page out of fifty, degrades the whole signal rather than failing gracefully, which is why we generate it programmatically and validate it against Search Console’s international targeting report before launch, not just eyeball a sample. Ongoing cost of ownership is mostly translation, not code, every new page needs a translated version in every language or the pages you skip quietly become the weakest spot in your international SEO.
Price and timeline
| Option | Price | What it covers | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture plus 2 to 3 languages | from $2,500 | URL structure, hreflang, switcher, keyword research per language | 3 to 5 weeks |
| Full multilingual build, 4+ languages | from $6,000 | Everything above plus content and translation across all languages | 5 to 10 weeks |
Running cost depends on whether translation is ongoing; a site adding new content regularly should budget for per-page translation alongside the content itself.
Related
This pairs with static site generator with programmatic SEO when the pages across languages are generated from the same data, and with headless CMS setup so editors can manage translations without a developer. See the SEO and content service page for the keyword research process and the development service page for the build. For real examples, see the five-language Montenegro real estate site and the medical centres marketing rebuild.
Selling into more than one language market and not sure your hreflang is actually correct? Get in touch and we will check it for free before you pay for a fix.
FAQ
How much does a multilingual site cost?
From $2,500 for the architecture and hreflang setup on a 2 to 3 language site with existing content to translate, 3 to 5 weeks. A full multilingual build from scratch with content in every language runs closer to $6,000 to $15,000 depending on the number of languages and pages.
How long does it take?
3 to 5 weeks for the architecture and a few languages once content exists in the source language. Adding more languages to an architecture that is already built is much faster, usually a few days per language for translation and review.
What is the stack?
The slug and hreflang structure is framework-agnostic; we have built it on a custom static generator, Next.js with i18n routing, and WordPress with a multilingual plugin, depending on what the rest of the project needs.
Do you handle translation, or just the technical setup?
Both, if you want it. We can set up the architecture around content you already have translated, or run the translation ourselves with a native or near-native reviewer per language and SEO keyword research specific to that market, not a literal translation of the English keywords.
What is the most common mistake you fix?
Hreflang tags that point to the wrong page, or that exist on some pages but not others, which confuses Google about which version to rank where. The second most common is translating content but not the keywords underneath it, so the translated page reads fine but never ranks because nobody searches those exact words.