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What was the core purpose of getting your business online? Targeting a wider audience, letting the entire globe know about your business services, and establishing a customer base. In short, creating a win-win situation for your enterprise, isn’t it?
The strategy deserves to be well-appreciated, but what about its execution? Well, multilingualism is an effective way that can help you achieve this.
Having a Multilingual WordPress Website can expand your online presence and connect with a broader range of visitors. This multilingual website appearance enhances user experience by allowing the audience to access content in their preferred language and understand your business offerings. We are about to cover the same!
By the end of this guide, you’ll be all nailed to turn your current web into a WordPress multilingual site and grab all the listed opportunities for scaling your business higher. So, let’s move on!
Introduction to Multilingual WordPress Website
Breaking the language barriers, let’s unlock the global business growth of your firm! The evolving internet world has boosted businesses, bloggers, and organizations to reach audiences far and wide.
Now, your website is a medium that connects visitors from another pole to your business services pole. Here, the mid tunnel is the language that can work as both a boon or a barrier – depending on the measures you take regarding it.
Basically, the multilingual site works as a language switcher. Whenever a user visits your WordPress site depending on their region the web offers them a preferred language switcher option so that the interface looks and reads familiar to them. Depending on the translation plugin you choose you can automate this procedure.
Benefits to Create Multilingual WordPress Website
Creating a multilingual WordPress website can offer several benefits, especially if your target audience includes people from another region – and speak a different language. Here are some of the advantages of having a multilingual website:
1. Expanded Global Reach
By offering your website content in multiple languages, you can reach a broader and more diverse audience worldwide. This can help you tap into new markets and attract international web visitors.
2. Increased Conversions
A multilingual WordPress site can lead to higher conversion rates, for analyzing the results you can use multiple website optimization tools. Visitors are more likely to convert (make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, etc.) when they can understand the content in their language.
3. Enhanced SEO
Multilingual websites can also be massively beneficial for streamlining your business appearance with the WordPress SEO checklist. When you offer content in multiple languages, you can target specific keywords and phrases in each language, making it easier for your site to rank higher in international search results.
4. Improved User Experience
Indeed, following web design trends can massively improve user experience but language switcher option is also important. Visitors are more likely to engage with your website and spend more time on it if they can access content as per their preferred language.
5. Catering to Local Preferences
Different regions may have varying preferences and cultural norms. A multilingual website allows you to tailor your content to specific local audiences, demonstrating cultural sensitivity and relevance.
6. Competitive Advantage
In many industries, having a multilingual website can give you a competitive edge. If your competitors are not catering to an international audience, you can differentiate yourself and target a wider audience by doing so.
7. Better Engagement
You prefer to share information that you yourself understand, having different language on your site not only your practices but also the users can indirectly help you to reach a wider audience.
By adding a translation service or we can say a feature on your site, visitors are more likely to engage with content, leave comments, and share it on social media when it’s available in their preferred language.
8. Easier Localization
If you plan to expand your business into different countries, having a WordPress multilingual website provides a foundation for easier localization of products or services. You can adapt your content and offerings more effectively.
9. Accessibility
A multilingual website can make your content accessible to whichever audience you want to target, including people with limited or not even a bit of proficiency in the site’s primary language.
Thus, this translation management can make the business appearance wider, wider, and wider. No matter from wherever you want to get customers by unlocking real time web language translation you achieve it very easily and always check on achieved results using website optimization tools.
How to Create Multilingual WordPress Website?
To create a multilingual WordPress website, you can use plugins like TranslatePress, WPML (The WordPress Multilingual Plugin), and Polylang. These plugins make it relatively straightforward to manage and translate content in multiple languages.
However, keep in mind that maintaining a multilingual website requires ongoing effort to ensure that all content remains up-to-date and accurate in each language.
Steps to Create Multilingual WordPress Website Using TranslatePress
TranslatePress is a popular WordPress plugin that enables the creating of a multilingual website with ease.
It provides a user-friendly interface and a range of features for translating and managing your website’s content. Here are the steps to create a multilingual WordPress website using TranslatePress:
Step 1: Install and Activate TranslatePress
- Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
- Go to the ‘Plugins‘ section.
- Click ‘Add New.’
- In the search bar, type ‘TranslatePress.’
- Once you find the ‘TranslatePress‘ plugin by ‘Cozmoslabs,’ consider beginning the WordPress plugin installation process.
- After installation, for activating the plugin – click ‘Activate‘.
Step 2: Configure TranslatePress
- After plugin activation, In the WordPress dashboard, under settings – you’ll find a new menu tab called ‘TranslatePress’.
- For navigating to TranslatePress settings, you can also go to the ‘Plugins’ tab
- After redirecting from the Plugins tab, Under TranslatePress you’ll see an option of ‘Settings‘. Tap on it.
- There you’ll see multiple tabs you can play around with, for now, let’s move on to the configuration.
- Under the first – ‘General‘ tab, you can configure the ‘default language‘ and add the language you want to translate WordPress site in.
Step 3: Apply Advanced Settings (Optional)
- Scrolling down you’ll get to see multiple other options, such as; ‘Native language name‘, ‘Use a subdirectory for the default language‘, and ‘Language switcher‘.
- By enabling the ‘Native Language Name‘, the native name will be displayed when the content is translated, or else by default, it will show in English.
- Selecting ‘Yes‘ next to ‘Use a subdirectory for the default language‘, all the web visitors who first see the default language will be listed as the first one on the ‘All Languages‘ list.
- ‘Language switcher‘ lets you choose how you would like to show the language switcher option – such as ‘Full Language Name‘, ‘Flags with Full Language Names‘, and ‘Only Flags.’
- You can also display the language switcher option in a floating layout, while applying different display filters such as ‘theme‘ and ‘position‘.
Step 4: Enable Automatic Translation
- It’s available, right next tab of ‘Translate Site‘.
- Click on ‘Automatic Translation‘.
- By default, the settings will be set to ‘No‘, Change it to ‘Yes‘.
- Once you change this setting, there will be multiple other options listed below.
- You can choose from ‘Google Translate’ or ‘DeepL‘, as per your preference.
- Get Google Translate API: Google Cloud → APIs and services → Enabled APIs and service → + Enable APIs and Services.
- Search for ‘Cloud Translation API‘, and enable it.
- Go to ‘Credentials‘ → + Create Credentials → API Key, then tap on Restrict Key.
- Select ‘HTTP referrers‘. Under the yellow warning box, keep the input as guided on the TranslatePress setup page. (Usually ‘http://example.com/‘)
- Select the Quotas Tab, then select ‘v2 and v3 general model characters per day’.
- Go back to ‘Credentials‘ in Google Cloud, and tap on the ‘Show Key‘ to get the API to add in TranslatePress.
- Once the procedure is completed, you can come back to the TranslatePress configuration page, enter the Google Translate API key, and get all running well.
Step 5: Display TranslatePress in Menu
- Login to the WordPress admin panel.
- Go to ‘Appearance‘ → ‘Menus‘.
- There will be tabs mentioned on the page, including ‘Pages‘, and ‘Posts‘ – right below that you’ll see a tab named ‘Language Switcher‘.
- After selecting it, you’ll see the dropdown of languages you added to translate the web.
- Select the new language and add it to the menu.
- Once added, tap on ‘Save Menu‘.
- And that’s it! Go to the live website and you’ll see language choosing options right there.
Step 6: Display TranslatePress in Page or Posts
- No matter, if you want to display a translating option to a Pages or posts. TranslatePress lets you do it simply in just a click.
- In the TranslatePress plugin setting, under the general tab – just go to the ‘Language Switcher‘ You’ll see a tick marked ‘Shortcode [language-switcher]‘
- You need to copy just ‘[language-switcher]‘.
- Go to the page/posts you want to add the language translating option.
- Open the editing version of that specific page or WordPress post.
- Search for ‘Shortcode‘.
- Drag and drop the ‘Shortcode‘ element, in your preferred section.
- Paste the ‘[language-switcher]‘ code snippet.
- Save the changes, and that’s all! You can have a look at your WordPress multi language translating site by visiting its URL.
TranslatePress Additional Features
Unlike other multilingual WordPress plugins, TranslatePress is not bordered just till web content translation. There are several features TranslatePress offers and must check on:
1. Translate Theme and Plugins
TranslatePress allows you to translate not only your content but also your theme and plugins. In the TranslatePress settings, under the ‘General‘ tab, you can enable automatic translation for your theme and plugins.
2. Customize Language Switcher
TranslatePress includes a built-in language switcher that allows users to change the language of the site. You can customize its appearance and placement from the ‘Settings‘ tab.
3. SEO Considerations
TranslatePress is SEO-friendly, but you must make sure that each translated page has a unique SEO title and meta description. You can do this within the translation editor for each page or post.
4. Optimize for Performance
Keep in mind that having multiple languages can impact your website’s performance. You may want to consider caching WordPress site using plugins and optimizing images for each language version.
5. Regularly Update Translation
You can choose ‘Automatic Translation’. But, if you are considering manual translation, ensure conducting the required practices for current and ongoing updates of the content.
TranslatePress simplifies the process of creating a multilingual WordPress website, making it accessible even for those without extensive technical knowledge.
The steps outlined above should help you get started with translating your website content and offering it in multiple languages to the audience.
FAQs About Creating Multilingual WordPress Website
Conclusion
Congrats! Your audience won’t be switching to your competitor’s site due to any language barriers, no matter from whichever region they visited your WordPress website.
Thus, creating a multilingual WordPress offers numerous opportunities to expand your online presence and help you connect with a broader audience.
Throughout the journey, first, we understood ‘What is multilingual in WordPress?’ and then what benefits you can grab by turning your site into a multilingual WordPress website.
Afterwards, we moved to the step of choosing best WordPress plugin for translating sites – TranslatePress; a powerful plugin that simplifies the process of creating a multilingual website in WordPress.
By following the steps outlined in the guide, you can set up TranslatePress, configure it, and start translating your website content efficiently. If you need any further assistance with the same or any other WordPress related query feel free to reach out to us.
