bilingual
Building a bilingual LV / RU website that ranks
S
Sandis · Founder of Mājaslapu izstrāde
·6 min read
Many Latvian businesses need both Latvian and Russian. Done wrong, Google mixes the versions and rankings drop. Here is how to do it right.
01
Separate URLs and hreflang
Give each language its own URL and add hreflang tags so Google links the versions.
Do not mix languages on one page; it confuses both users and search.
02
Search-aware translation
Translate around how people search in each language, not word for word.
Adapt titles and meta tags to LV and RU queries separately.
03
Common mistakes
Bulk machine translation without review lowers quality and trust.
Auto-redirecting by IP and hiding the language switch hurts users and bots.