many website owners, translating their website is on the top of their list when it comes to increasing their reach, revenue, and standing out from the competition. In fact, 50% of Google searches are in languages other than English, making it a smart business decision to cater to these additional markets too.
But, it’s not all about growing in new markets, what about the markets you’re already active in. Many countries and regions have more than 1 official language, meaning there’s even space to grow within your home market.
So, in this article, we’ll take a look at one of the leading website translation solutions, Weglot, and see how to quickly add as many languages as you’d like to your Brizy built website in just minutes.
And whether you’re a developer or in the marketing team, the good news is that anyone can install Weglot and have a multilingual website up and running instantly!
Let’s take a look at how Weglot works.
How to install Weglot on your Brizy built website
Adding languages with Weglot is quick and easy. Just follow these 4 steps:
#1 Create a Weglot account
Firstly, you’ll need to create a Weglot account as this is where you’ll manage all your translations.
Once you’ve created your Weglot account, you’ll be prompted to select your website technology, in this case, select ‘Other’.
#2 Add your new languages
Now the fun part - it’s time to add your new languages! In the next screen, add your domain name, the language of your original website and choose the languages you want to add, then click ‘Next’.
#3 Create subdomains
In this step, you’ll create your SEO-friendly subdomains, such as https://fr.mywebsite/ (for a French website).
Here you’ll need access to your domain name provider account. Navigate to the area where you manage your DNS and add a new CNAME entry. The ‘name’ will be the language code given to you in the Weglot setup process and the ‘data’ section is always ‘websites.weglot.com’.
Check out Weglot’s tutorial videos for help with this step.
Once you’ve saved this entry in your domain name provider, go back to your Weglot account and click on the ‘Check DNS’ button. The red crosses should turn to green ticks but could take up to 10 minutes to do so.
#4 Add your language switcher
The final step is to add a front-end language switcher to your website. Copy the piece of code from your Weglot Dashboard and find the place on your CMS interface where you can add code into the <head> section of your HTML pages. This is often in the CMS settings, under a tab usually titled “Custom Code”.
And that’s it, your multilingual website is now live! Head on over to your website to see that Weglot has added a front-end language switcher to your site. Switch between the languages to see your multilingual site in action. Weglot has given you a first layer of machine translation that you can make edits to, which we’ll discuss later.
As you can see on our Brizy built website, we’ve used custom code to alter the look and appearance of our language switcher, but you can also make design changes without the need for any code
By default, Weglot adds the following language switcher to the bottom right corner of your website.
To make a number of different changes to the look, head to your Weglot Dashboard, ‘Settings’, ‘Language Switcher’. This is also where you can add custom CSS if you wish.
So, even here, you don’t need any coding knowledge to make simple changes to the appearance by toggling on or off numerous options until you find your desired look.
Managing your translations
So, what about your translations. As we briefly mentioned, Weglot has given you a first layer of machine translation. If you’re happy to leave your translations like this, then you’re good to go. For those looking to use a mix of human translation, the Weglot Dashboard is your best friend.
Make manual edits and reviews, add your own translation team or order professional translators through the Weglot Dashboard to display the translation quality you want. Many Weglot users combine machine and manual reviewing to give them a fast and accurately translated website.
Let’s take a quick look at how to edit a translation within the Weglot Dashboard. Go to your ‘Translations’ tab where you’ll see all the language pairs you’ve added to your website.
Click on the language pair you want to edit.
You’ll then see the following overview of your translations organized by URL. Use the search bar to look for a specific translation, select a URL to see all the translations associated with that page, and make use of the filter option to select by translation quality and translation type.
To edit a translation, simply click on the translated version, make a change and it will automatically be saved and live on your website.
You can also make edits through a live preview of your website if you like to see things more visually. Click on the ‘Visual Editor’ tab in your dashboard to get to this view.
Hover over the text, click on the blue pencil icon and edit your translations in the context of your site.
Once you’ve clicked ‘OK’, the edit will be live on your website.
How does Weglot manage SEO
Let’s also not forget about multilingual SEO. Now you’ve got your translated website, it’s also important to be found by your new markets. Weglot manages your multilingual SEO by giving you language-specific subdomains, translated metadata, and importantly automatically added hreflang tags.
These features mean your newly translated website will be indexed on search engines in your new languages, giving you visibility on international search engines.
Ready to translate your Brizy built website? Try Weglot for free for 10 days.