Targeting other languages

[Darth]

Say I have some pages on my Wordpress site that are ranking well in English speaking countries, and I want to target Germany for example from the same website/domain. What would be the best way to go about this? I imagine something like

1. Translate article to German (upwork)
2. Find some Wordpress plugin (maybe https://wpml.org/) and enter the translation
3. It creates a new URL for the article on the same domain (example.com/de/best-cars/)
4. It also create meta data for Google on both versions of the page (example.com/de/best-cars/ and example.com/best-cars/) so Google knows to show the German (de) one on Google.de?
5. That's it?

Thanks

 

[ToffeeLa]

Say I have some pages on my Wordpress site that are ranking well in English speaking countries, and I want to target Germany for example from the same website/domain. What would be the best way to go about this? I imagine something like

1. Translate article to German (upwork)
2. Find some Wordpress plugin (maybe https://wpml.org/) and enter the translation
3. It creates a new URL for the article on the same domain (example.com/de/best-cars/)
4. It also create meta data for Google on both versions of the page (example.com/de/best-cars/ and example.com/best-cars/) so Google knows to show the German (de) one on Google.de?
5. That's it?

1) If you are going to go the Upwork route either a) ensure you have a native speaker who is educated translate and b) have another native speaker proofread it. (If it is decent content.) Alternatively, use Deepl for a rough translation (sometimes quite rough, sometimes OK) and then get it proofread as previous.
2) Why do you need a plugin? Just use WP if you are not creating a new domain. Also ensure that you have sufficient internal links going to the relevant German content. And please - one of my personal bugbears - use Deutsch rather than a German flag if you are linking to the German language sitewide.
4) Use the lang attribute.
5) Goes without saying but get German-language links.

Take a look in your favourite search engine tool and find out who is ranking in Google.de. Then look at what they are ranking for and the phrases they are targeting. They will do your kw research for you even if you don't speak the language.

Note that foreign language kw stuff can be tricky (or interesting) especially because of things like accents or cases (words change depending on the way they are used in many languages) or word combinations (Fernsehapparat is a TV but TV in different contexts such as watching could also be fern or fernsehen or it could be TV or Fernsehgerät or Fernseher).

 

[BCN]

Easiest is WPML. I've set up many sites using country-ISO.domain.com in WPML. Then you can even translate strings (logo, address etc).

I'm building a monster site this way using BuSo lightning, WPML, Gutenberg block, and ACF atm. For native, Google and FB traffic.

I don't use translators for this site atm (writing it myself), but for translators the best for me has been using airtable, google sheets or google docs. Get them from upwork and qualify them well. Specify the tone, and tell them to not translate directly. Then you can import google docs direct to WP if you want.

When you trust them you can give them a writers account in WP.