Table of contents
Translating is not ranking
Many companies in north-east Italy have been exporting for decades and have a site translated into English and German. Then they look at the data and find that almost nobody arrives from abroad. The reason is rarely translation quality: it is that the site never tells Google which version to show to whom.
A search engine has two separate problems to solve. First, understanding that a page also exists in other languages and is not duplicate content. Second, deciding which version to show a user searching from Munich, Manchester or Milan. Without those signals the engine guesses — and it often guesses badly, showing the Italian version to someone searching in German.
Then there is a third problem, the most underestimated of all: people do not search for translations of your words. A company ranking in Italy for «lavorazioni meccaniche di precisione» does not automatically rank for «precision machining» just by translating the phrase, because English-speaking buyers use different terms and different combinations.
URL structure: three options
The first decision is where the translated versions live. There are three options, and the choice shapes everything else.
Subfolders (example.com/en/, example.com/de/). This suits most small and medium businesses: one domain, so the authority built over the years counts for every language. Simple to manage, low cost, no extra infrastructure.
Subdomains (en.example.com). They separate markets more cleanly, but engines treat them as partly distinct sites: authority is split and each version starts at a disadvantage.
Country domains (example.de, example.fr). They give the strongest geographic signal and are the right choice for companies with a real commercial presence in the country. But they are separate sites: authority from zero, multiplied costs, triple maintenance.
For a company exporting without foreign branches, subfolders are almost always the right answer. It is the structure we use on this site too.
Hreflang: the signal that decides everything
The hreflang attribute is the technical element that tells search engines: this page has an equivalent version in another language, and it lives at this address. Without it, versions compete with each other instead of reinforcing one another.
Three rules that are almost always broken. First: references must be reciprocal. If the Italian page points to the German one, the German one must point back. A one-way link is ignored entirely.
Second: every page must also reference itself. It looks redundant, but it is how the engine verifies the group is coherent.
Third: the codes must be correct. Language follows ISO 639-1, country follows ISO 3166-1. «de» means German everywhere; «de-AT» means German for Austria. Using «de-DE» when you also serve Austria and Switzerland cuts out two markets that speak the same language.
Add an x-default value, which indicates which version to show to anyone who does not match any expected combination. Usually that is the English version, or a homepage with a language selector.
Keywords are researched again, for every market
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is what separates a translated site from a site that sells.
Search volume changes. A term that is central in Italy can be marginal in Germany, and the other way round. Who searches changes too: in some markets the purchasing department searches with technical terms, in others the owner searches with generic ones.
The actual vocabulary changes. In engineering, an Italian firm talks about «conto terzi»; the equivalent buyers actually use is «contract manufacturing», not the literal translation. In furniture, «arredamento su misura» becomes «bespoke furniture» in the UK and «custom furniture» in the US: two markets, two words.
Competitors change as well. Whoever ranks above you on Google.de is not who ranks above you on Google.it, and the difficulty level can be completely different.
The practical method: start from the keywords already working in Italian, translate them as a working hypothesis, then check each one with a keyword research tool set to the right country. Usually half the literal translations get discarded.
Machine translation: when it works and when it does not
Machine translation has improved enormously and is not penalised as such. Google penalises poor quality content, regardless of how it was produced.
That said, there is a practical difference between content types. For repetitive product pages with a fixed structure and standard terminology, good machine translation reviewed by a person is sustainable and works.
For pages that need to persuade — about us, service pages, content explaining why someone should choose you — machine translation shows. Not in errors, which are rare now, but in register: correct sentences no native speaker would write. In a market where the client assesses you before writing to you, that detail counts.
The rule we follow: machine plus human review for volume, native speaker for the pages that generate enquiries. And in every case titles and descriptions always written by hand, because they are the first thing the market reads and they carry the keywords you verified.
The mistakes we see most often
Automatic redirection based on location. Sending anyone connecting from Germany to the German version seems helpful: in practice it stops engines crawling the other versions, because the crawler almost always arrives from a single country. Better a notice offering the language switch, leaving the choice open.
Translated menu, untranslated content. Pages with German navigation and Italian body text: to the engine that page is Italian, and the German version effectively does not exist.
Language selector with flags. Flags indicate countries, not languages. An Austrian does not identify with the German flag, and neither does a Swiss visitor. Better the language name written in that language: Deutsch, English, Italiano.
Hreflang between non-equivalent pages. Linking the Italian services page to the English homepage because the English services page does not exist. The link belongs between pages that say the same thing; if a version is missing, that link is simply left out.
Forgetting local detail. Date format, currency, units of measurement, phone number with international prefix. These are signals of care that visitors register without noticing.
Where to start, in order
If you are considering opening your site to one or more foreign markets, this is the order that makes sense.
First: choose markets, not languages. One language done well for a market that generates revenue beats four shallow ones. Look at where enquiries already come from and where your competitors sell.
Second: decide the structure. Subfolders in most cases. It is a hard choice to reverse later.
Third: do keyword research on the chosen market. Before translating a single line. The keywords you find determine which pages you actually need, and they often differ from the Italian ones.
Fourth: translate the pages that matter, not the whole site. Home, main services or products, about, contact. The rest follows when data says it is needed.
Fifth: implement hreflang and verify. Search Console reports errors in its dedicated section: missing reciprocity, invalid codes, pages without self-reference.
Sixth: measure per market. Filter by country in Search Console. It is the only way to know whether the German version is working or just taking up space.