Setting up existing WP Site for Multi Lingual Content

**nwalker** · 27 January 2021, 9:59 am

I'm considering translating the content of an existing WP site into multiple languages.

I've been doing some searches in Google but the results I'm getting tend to be plugin related.

I'm need some guidance on what a good approach should be. I plan to have the translations done manually, rather than rely on plugins and I'll probably take a staged approach prioritising my existing ranking pages.

I'm also wondering whether there is anything else i need to consider before starting down this process.

Any help, tips or advice is greatly received.

**Slawete** · 27 January 2021, 4:23 pm

You'll need a web developer that has its own professional approach to make an existing WP site multilingual and already did it in the past. Otherwise the risk is too high.

My site was in English only and I have refactored it all making it bilingual. But in my case it's not WP, and I know very well the technology it is built on, since I learned it from scratch(not being a developer) and I can do there anything I want, following the good practices of coding.

The developer should have a good experience in multilingual sites, since there are many SEO aspects that require code implementation.

To be honest, if there are a lot of content on your site, I wouldn't recommend to add translations. A negative impact on your traffic is inevitable, at least for a while. It's a big code refactoring and there for sure will be some human errors, that could be detected only after you loose a good share of your traffic.

**dudik** · 27 January 2021, 4:38 pm

Polylang plugin for wordpress can solve it.

**nwalker** · 28 January 2021, 2:51 am

So it seems it's a little more complicated than i first thought.

At the moment the site ranks for English content in google.co.uk and google.com - so gets mix of English speaking and International visitors.

If for example i translate the site or page into German, then i'll still have the rankings for .co.uk and .com. With a fair wind will the German content start to rank in Google.de?

If I keep the site as one site then I obviously keep the authority all on that site - but if I choose to go with a subdomain does that have any authority or is that like starting a new site?

I'm confused about what the best approach is.

Would love to know how other people have tackled this?

**Juan Roman** · 28 January 2021, 5:07 am

You can use WPML or Polylang plugin for WP.

It's always a risk when you translate the site, but chances are you will both keep your .com and .co.uk rankings, plus gain rankings in .de and any other language you translate to if everything is done properly.

I translated the homepage of my previous site (it was kind of a one-page website) to 7 or 8 languages and most translated pages ranked quite well and secured great conversions.

Other webmasters I spoke to have also had good results with said WP translation plugins. I'm sure you could do it better with custom translations with the help of developers, but these WP plugins do the trick as well.

If I were you, I would keep the authority of your main site and create mainsite.com/de/, mainsite.com/fi/ and so on.

**artrust99** · 31 January 2021, 11:14 am

Had the same problem before - solved with regional subdomains, but thats not the best solution. Don't repeat my mistakes

go for folders- domain.com/de/

**Nenad** · 31 January 2021, 11:48 am

Originally Posted by Juan Roman

You can use WPML or Polylang plugin for WP.

It's always a risk when you translate the site, but chances are you will both keep your .com and .co.uk rankings, plus gain rankings in .de and any other language you translate to if everything is done properly.

I translated the homepage of my previous site (it was kind of a one-page website) to 7 or 8 languages and most translated pages ranked quite well and secured great conversions.

Other webmasters I spoke to have also had good results with said WP translation plugins. I'm sure you could do it better with custom translations with the help of developers, but these WP plugins do the trick as well.

If I were you, I would keep the authority of your main site and create mainsite.com/de/, mainsite.com/fi/ and so on.

I do agree. I believe that with translating, you'll keep the .com, and .co.uk rankings, and still get rankings for other markets (.de, .fi, and others). And as the Juan Roman just said, keep the authority of your main site. Best of luck.

**dannyx** · 31 January 2021, 12:09 pm

As for plugins, Translate Press is great in my opinion, I also tried others, but I liked this one, the editing is going very smoothly, of course with human translation. There is one language in the free version.

**Nenad** · 31 January 2021, 12:31 pm

I will try this plugin. Didn't know that they give you one language in free version. Thanks.

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