A bilingual business website in French and English adds a second complete journey to your site: menus, forms, error messages, confirmation emails, legal notices, titles for Google and addresses, in each language. Every page must be linked to its counterpart, and every update is made twice. The second language is worth the effort if your clients use it to find you or write to you, and if you can keep both versions up to date.
Who reads a website in English in Geneva?
In Geneva, 31% of employed people speak English at work, on average over 2020-2024, according to OCSTAT, the cantonal statistics office (table T 01.06.1.03, page in French). The figure covers the permanent resident population in employment aged 15 and over, excluding international civil servants and diplomats. It says nothing about who buys in English or who cannot read French.
To decide on a multilingual website, start with your own exchanges: enquiries received in English, quotes written in English, clients whose working language is English. On eljadiworks.com, from 7 July to 4 October 2026 (data retrieved on 6 October 2026), Search Console gives this article 19 impressions and 1 click in French, and 43 impressions with no click in English.
A second language serves no purpose when your audience does not read it, or when you cannot keep the content up to date in both languages. An English version with outdated prices or opening hours misleads the visitor. In either case, one well-kept language is enough.
Which pages should you translate first?
To translate your website in stages, start with the pages that lead to an enquiry:
- the homepage;
- the page for each service you offer in English;
- the projects that concern this audience;
- the contact page, the form and everything that follows sending it;
- the legal notice and privacy policy the form links to.
Each translated page is translated in full. Google recommends a single language for the content and navigation of each page, and notes that translating only the boilerplate text while keeping most of the content in another language can create a bad user experience: the same content then appears several times in search results (Google Search Central).
Plan for updates too. A changed price, service or opening time changes in both languages on the same day. Decide before launch who writes each version and who approves it.
What needs translating besides the text?
These elements only appear when someone uses the site, so reading through the pages will not catch them.
| Element | What to translate | Pitfall |
|---|---|---|
| Menus | Labels, buttons, language switcher | A switcher that leads to the other language’s homepage instead of the matching page |
| Forms | Labels, help text, list options, send button | Help text or a drop-down list left in French |
| Error messages | Missing field, invalid format, failed sending | Messages generated by the code or the sending service, missing from the translation files |
| Confirmation emails | Subject, body, signature | A confirmation in French sent to a visitor who wrote in English |
| Legal notices | Legal notice, privacy policy, terms | An English version that misses the latest change to the French one |
| Title and description | Title tag and meta description of each page | A French title kept on the English page, which then mixes two languages (Google) |
| Translated addresses | Slug of each page and each article | An English address made of French words; Google advises using words in your audience’s language (Google) |
For writing the titles and descriptions themselves, the Geneva local SEO checklist sets out what they should contain.
How does eljadiworks.com separate French and English?
In October 2026, this site follows four rules, each based on Google’s documentation.
- One address per language. French sits at the root, English under
/en/. Google recommends different URLs for each language version, rather than cookies or browser settings (Google Search Central). - Translated, paired slugs. This article is called
bilingual-website-french-english-smein English andsite-web-bilingue-francais-anglais-pmein French. A shared identifier links the two versions, and the language switcher takes you from one to the other. - Reciprocal hreflang with x-default. Each page on eljadiworks.com declares its
frversion, itsenversion and anx-defaultvalue, which points to the French version, in its metadata and in the sitemap. Google asks for each language version to list itself as well as all the others, and recommendsx-defaultfor unmatched languages (Google Search Central). On both versions of this article, checked on 6 October 2026,frandx-defaultpoint to/articles/site-web-bilingue-francais-anglais-pme/, andento/en/articles/bilingual-website-french-english-sme/. - No redirection based on the browser language. eljadiworks.com stores no language cookie: the address alone decides the language. A browser set to French stays on the English page that was opened, and the visitor switches with the language switcher. Google advises against redirecting users based on the language you think they speak, as such redirections can stop users and search engines from viewing all the versions; it suggests links to the other language versions instead (Google Search Central).
Hreflang annotations help Google show each visitor the right version. They do not guarantee any ranking. Google also states that it determines a page’s language with its own algorithms, without using hreflang or the HTML lang attribute (Google Search Central).
What changes with a right-to-left language?
Ahmed Ghattour & Co is a tax audit firm in Tripoli. Its old WordPress site had been delivered around 2020. The site I delivered in 2026 is in English and Arabic, and its layout follows both reading directions: left to right in English, right to left in Arabic. I am now preparing its new version, which I am offering free of charge. The Ahmed Ghattour & Co case study presents the project.
The reading direction affects the whole layout. The W3C recommends adding dir="rtl" to the html element whenever the document reads from right to left: this sets the base direction for the whole page. Blocks are then right-aligned, punctuation appears in the right place, table columns run from right to left and input in form fields starts on the right (W3C).
Each component therefore needs checking in both directions: arrows, column order, and the alignment of lists and fields.
Can you translate your website with an automatic tool?
A machine translation tool can prepare a draft. I then recommend a review by someone who knows the trade: they check the meaning, conditions, limits, service names and practical details such as opening hours, addresses and lead times.
Human review of machine translation is a standardised practice. ISO 18587:2017 sets out the requirements for full human post-editing of machine translation output, and the competences of post-editors (ISO).
The reviewed text is published as a page in its own right, at its own address and in a single language. A plugin that translates the page on the fly, without a separate address for each language, does not follow Google’s recommendation of a distinct URL for each language version (Google Search Central).
What does a second language cost?
The Geneva website package includes one language. The second is priced in a separate proposal: the pages to translate and their approval are agreed before work starts. Professional translation is not included and is arranged separately.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites, last updated 10 December 2025, consulted 6 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, Tell Google about localized versions of your page, last updated 21 September 2026, consulted 6 October 2026.
- Google Search Central, URL structure best practices, last updated 10 December 2025, consulted 6 October 2026.
- OCSTAT, languages and religions: overview, key figures (2020-2024 average), and list of tables (table T 01.06.1.03), in French only, consulted 6 October 2026.
- ISO, ISO 18587:2017, Translation services: post-editing of machine translation output, requirements, published April 2017, consulted 6 October 2026.
- W3C, Structural markup and right-to-left text in HTML, last substantive update 25 June 2021, consulted 6 October 2026.
