A multilingual website: what to decide before translating.

Rodos Backpackers is available in seven languages; Blife and OleoEco in two. Translating the text is the easy part. These are the decisions worth making first.

Joaquín Martinez HerreraCEO, Brova Digital Group Published17 September 2026 Reading time2 min

Which languages, and why

The first step is knowing who visits the website. Rodos Backpackers welcomes travellers from all over Europe, so its website is available in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish, Greek and Russian.

Blife, in Faro, is in Portuguese and English. OleoEco, which sells olive oil mainly abroad, is in Spanish and English. Each website speaks the languages of its customers.

A separate address for each language

On the Rodos Backpackers website, each language has its own address. This way Google indexes each version separately and shows each person the page in their own language.

It is good practice to link the versions to one another with hreflang tags. They tell Google that these are the same page in different languages, so it does not treat them as duplicate content.

Rodos Backpackers home page in Spanish with a notice offering to view the website in German — If the browser is set to another language on the list, a notice offers to switch.

Suggest the language, do not force it

If the visitor’s browser is set to one of the website’s languages, a notice offers to switch. If they decline, the website does not ask again.

Why not redirect automatically. Many people use their browser in one language and prefer to read in another. An automatic redirect can also prevent Google from seeing every version of the website.

A language selector that is always visible

The language menu shows each language written in its own language: Deutsch, Suomi, Italiano. Visitors looking for their language recognise it even if they do not understand the rest of the page.

Rodos Backpackers language menu open, with each language written in its own language — Each language, written in its own language.

Before you translate

Which languages your customers speak, based on your visitor data and your bookings or sales.
Who will review each translation and who will keep it up to date.
What happens to content that changes frequently, such as prices, promotions or dates.
Whether forms, automated emails and the booking engine also need to be translated.