Can an SEO company help with multilingual websites?

Yes. Translating pages is the visible part; the SEO work is making sure Google can tell what language each page is in, knows which pages are versions of each other, and shows each searcher the right one. That means pages written in one language each, a separate URL for each language version, correct hreflang markup with valid codes, a fallback for languages you do not cover, a language switcher people can use, and keyword research done in each language rather than translated.

How Google decides what language a page is in

Google’s guide to managing multi-regional and multilingual sites states that “Google uses the visible content of your page to determine its language”, and that it does not use code-level language information such as lang attributes, or the URL. The practical rule follows: keep the content and navigation of each page in a single language, and avoid side-by-side translations on one page. The same guide warns that translating only the boilerplate of a page while the main content stays in one language can put the same content in search results several times under different languages.

Telling Google which pages belong together

Hreflang markup tells Google that pages are language or regional versions of the same content. Google’s page on telling Google about localized versions describes three ways to add it, in the page’s HTML, in HTTP headers, or in a sitemap, and says the three are equivalent from Google’s perspective, so there is no benefit in using more than one. Whichever method is used, each version has to list itself and all its alternates, and the links have to be returned by every page in the set.

The codes follow fixed standards: the language code follows ISO 639-1 and the optional region code follows ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2; Google states that codes outside those standards, such as es-419, are not supported. For visitors whose language you do not cover, the guide suggests an x-default value pointing to a fallback page, such as a language selector. Errors here are easy to make and hard to see, so a company should check the markup across the whole site after implementation and after every change.

Translations are not duplicates

One worry is that language versions will be treated as duplicate content. Google’s localized versions page answers it: “Localized versions of a page are only considered duplicates if the main content of the page remains untranslated.” The risk lies in pages where only the template has been translated, not in genuinely translated pages.

Separate URLs and a usable switcher

Google’s multilingual guide recommends a different URL for each language version rather than using cookies or browser settings to change the language on one address, so that every version can be crawled and indexed. A language switcher should be visible on every page and labeled with language names written in that language. A flag represents a country, not a language, so flags alone can confuse visitors where one language is spoken in several countries or one country uses several languages.

Translation and keyword research

Direct translation of your keywords can miss the words people actually search for in another language. A company should research demand in each language, adapt titles and headings to those searches, and have native speakers review the pages that matter most, such as the homepage and main service or product pages, before they go live.