Bilingual website: when it is worth it and how to do it right
A real bilingual site needs a separate address for each language. If both languages share one URL and swap with a button, Google indexes only one and the other does not exist for search. It is worth it when a real share of your customers searches in the other language, not when you simply want to look international.
The mistake that cancels all the work
The most common setup is an EN/ES toggle that swaps the text on the same page. It looks fine and does nothing for ranking: there is one address, Google indexes whichever language it finds first, and the other competes for no search at all.
All the translation work stays invisible for exactly the thing you did it for.
How it is done properly
Each language at its own address: /services/ and /servicios/, or a subdirectory per language. The two link to each other with hreflang, which tells Google they are the same page in two versions and not duplicate content.
On a legal services site built this way, each language got its own address and the site went from one language’s pages to twenty-seven indexable ones.
What almost nobody translates and should
The contact channel. The most important and the least considered. If your customers in one language prefer WhatsApp and in the other email, the button itself has to change with the language, not just its label.
The URLs. A Spanish URL ranks for Spanish words. Translating the text and leaving the address in English wastes half the work.
Titles and descriptions. They are what shows in Google. If they exist in one language only, the translated page appears with the wrong title.
When it is not worth it
If the second language is a hunch rather than a fact. Look at where your enquiries come from today before duplicating the whole site, because you duplicate the maintenance too: every change becomes two.
And if you are going to translate with an automatic plugin, do not. A badly reviewed machine translation tells your customer you did not care enough to read it.
Frequent questions
Subdomain, subdirectory or separate domain?
Subdirectory, almost always: /en/ and /es/ inside the same domain. It concentrates all authority on one site instead of splitting it, and it is the simplest to maintain.
What if I only translate some pages?
You can, and sometimes should: translate the ones that answer searches in that language and leave the rest. What you must not do is link to a version that does not exist, because it sends the visitor to an error.