Running a WordPress site in two languages without regret

Bilingual sites are normal in Germany and standard in Canada. They are also where a lot of otherwise good sites lose search visibility, because the technical part is easy to do almost correctly.

The three approaches

• Plugin (Polylang or WPML). One install, one admin, posts linked as translations. Easiest to run. Adds weight and couples you to the plugin.
• Multisite. One WordPress network, one site per language. Cleaner separation, more hosting complexity, and content has to be moved manually.
• Separate installs. Total independence, total duplication of maintenance. Rarely worth it below a certain scale.

For most businesses under a few hundred pages, a plugin is the right answer, and Polylang is lighter than WPML if you do not need its translation-management workflow.

The URL decision

Use a subdirectory: /de/. Not a parameter, not a cookie, not automatic redirection based on IP. Every language version needs its own crawlable URL, and a bot arriving from a US data centre must be able to reach the German page.

hreflang, done properly

• Every page lists all versions of itself, including itself.
• The references must be reciprocal. If EN points at DE, DE must point back at EN, or both are ignored.
• Include an x-default for visitors whose language you do not cover.
• Use the right codes: de-DE, de-AT, de-CH are separate if you target them separately. Plain de covers all German speakers.

The mistake that costs the most

Machine-translating the site and leaving it. A German page that reads as a translation converts badly, and thin duplicated content across languages does you no favours. Translate the pages that sell; write the blog natively in the language of the audience you want. Twelve German articles written by a German speaker will outperform sixty translated ones.

Do not forget

Legal pages differ by market. A German site needs an Impressum and a GDPR-compliant privacy policy; the English version of the same site sold into Canada has different consent expectations under PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25. Translating the German text is not compliance.