Have you ever wanted to know how to create a multilingual website in WordPress? You might think that it’s hard to do, but it’s actually super easy! Maybe you created a website or thinking of creating one today and will have visitors from different countries who will view your content. If this is the case, then today’s post is exactly what you need! Today you will see how to create a multilingual website in WordPress for FREE without having to speak or learn a language. Does this sound like a plan? If so, let’s dive in!
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Why Do I Need A Multilingual Website?
When you create a website online and start blogging and publishing content, you will start to get page views in a jiffy. Also depending on the type of content and the demographics you are targeting you are bound to get readers who speak different languages. This is just something that comes with the territory.
This is the case for this very blog learnanet.com when I noticed my Google analytics and stats. Many of the visitors that make it to this blog from the search engines, Youtube and other platforms may speak or understand English, but prefer another language. To better accommodate these visitors and thus be able to serve my blog content to all, I have found a simple way to make my WordPress website multilingual.
NOTE: If you have not created your WordPress website yet, see this tutorial on how to make a WordPress website.
I decided to look deeper into my analytics to pick out the most common languages spoken by my website visitors based the countries web traffic comes from. I also noticed on my Youtube channel that many of people that watch my videos speak other languages as well. These viewers often come to my website after watching a video. This is another reason that helped me to see the need to learn how to make a website in multiple languages.
As a result I looked for simple way to have my pages & posts translated into those very targeted languages. The result? A better user experience!
I imagine that this is also why you googled looking for an easy way how to create a multilingual WordPress website. To help you learn how to do this, I know that most people love to watch videos versus reading. So I put together a simple video tutorial below that shows how using a FREE multilingual WordPress plugin called Google Language Translator.
As you could see clearly in this video tutorial that is really easy to build a multilingual website design by adding additional languages for your visitors to select from. I really like that once your visitor clicks the widget and selects their preferred language, it will automatically translate your posts or page within a few seconds. As your readers continue to navigate your WordPress website, this Google Language Translator will continue to work seamlessly in the background without any further effort on your part. You just have to set it up once and you are done!!
Things To Remember About Using A Free Multilingual WordPress Plugin
After learning how to create a multilingual website in WordPress, you are now ready to better serve your visitors. However, there are a few things that you should keep in mind when using ANY FREE multilingual WordPress plugin.
When you log into the dashboard of your WordPress website, you will notice that there are different language translator plugins that will help you to have a multilingual website design.
The Google Language Translator mentioned in our video above is just one of many available and the one that I prefer to use. However, you should remember that these translations are NOT rendered by a human.
Being that this is the case, we can’t expect perfection. But what I will say is that if you are looking for a simple FREE way to build a multilingual website in WordPress, then this is the best way to go.
Also, some may ask does having a website translated cause duplicate content? No, it does not according to Google.
This video below by Matt Cutt shows the truth about translation and duplicate content in Google’s eyes.
Hopefully after watching this brief video you understand how using a FREE multilingual WordPress plugin like Google language translator or ANY translator doesn’t affect your SEO rankings.
By using plugins like this you are not publishing the same content in that targeted language, rather simply providing a quick rendering of the content in that language for your reader while on your website.
Conclusion
I hope that you guys found this post today very helpful. This topic is one that comes up a lot for many bloggers, entrepreneurs and even eCommerce store owners. Basically if you have a website or thinking of creating a website very soon, then your website multilingual just makes sense especially if you have global visitors.
Did you find the video tutorial and info helpful? When you look at your website analytics, where do most of your web traffic come from? Which languages will you add to your website today to make it multilingual? Let me know your thoughts below please.