A website in Catalan, Spanish and English without losing SEO

A badly built multilingual site does not just fail to help: it subtracts. It duplicates content, confuses Google about which version to show and splits authority between pages competing with each other. Here is what to get right, in order.

First: one URL per language, always

This is the non-negotiable part. Every language needs its own address, indexable and linkable. If your site switches language with a JavaScript button without changing the URL, only one version exists as far as Google is concerned: the one that loads by default.

There are three valid structures:

Structure	Example	When to use it
Subfolder	yoursite.com/en/	Almost always. One site, one pool of authority, easy to maintain.
Subdomain	en.yoursite.com	When each market has its own team and infrastructure.
Country domain	yoursite.fr	Only with a real presence in that country and budget to maintain several sites.

For a Girona business running three languages, the subfolder wins almost every time. The other two multiply the work without giving anything back until there is real volume.

Second: hreflang done properly

hreflang is the tag that tells Google "this page and that one are the same page in another language". Without it, your three versions look like duplicate content; with it, Google shows each user the right one.

Three rules that fix 90 % of the mistakes:

1. It must be reciprocal. If the Spanish page points to the Catalan one, the Catalan one must point back. If one side is missing, Google ignores the whole relationship.
2. Every page points at itself. The English version includes its own hreflang="en".
3. Absolute, canonical URLs. No relative paths, and never point at a URL that redirects.

Add an x-default entry for the version anyone who fits none of the declared languages should see. And remember: hreflang is a language signal, not a ranking instruction. It does not make a page rank higher; it makes the right page rank.

Third: machine translation is not a strategy

Plugins that translate the site on the fly are tempting because they cost little and promise a lot. The problem is not that the translation is bad (it is less and less so), it is what happens around it:

• They generate URLs with parameters, or without correct hreflang.
• They translate text that should stay put: product names, brands, street addresses.
• They produce titles and descriptions nobody reviewed, built around keywords nobody searches for in that language.

And the heart of it: people do not search for the same thing in every language. A German looking for accommodation on the Costa Brava does not type the literal translation of what a Catalan types. Translate word for word and you compete for phrases nobody uses.

Fourth: what to really translate

Not all content deserves three versions. A realistic split:

• Always: home, service or product pages, contact, forms, error messages, privacy policy and legal texts.
• Almost always: search titles and descriptions, written fresh in each language rather than translated.
• Depends: the blog. If you publish to rank locally, Catalan and Spanish may be enough. If you sell to visitors, English matters.
• Never automatic: terms of sale, legal texts and anything with contractual consequences.

Non-text details count too: date formats, currency, units, name order and photography. A picture with a Catalan sign in it stands out inside the English version.

The Costa Brava case: French and German

Here the usual question is not whether to do English, but whether to add French and German. What we recommend:

• Start with Spanish, Catalan and English. English covers most international visitors, including many French and German travellers who search in English while planning.
• Look at the data before adding. Search Console and Analytics give you browser language and visitor country. If France is already your third country by sessions and English pages convert worse for that traffic, you have your answer.
• Add a language only if you can sustain it. Every new language adds translation, review, customer support and updates, forever. A German version two years out of date looks worse than no German version.

A practical test: if you cannot answer an email in that language within 24 hours, it is not time to put it on the site.

Common mistakes

• Redirecting automatically by IP. A French visitor holidaying in Girona lands on the Catalan version with no way out, and Google's crawler, which crawls from the United States, only ever sees one version.
• Translating the URL but not the content, or the other way round.
• Hiding the language switcher in the footer, in small type.
• Sending every language to the same form and then not knowing which language to reply in.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google penalise duplicate content across languages?

No. Content in different languages is not duplicate content. The problem appears when there are two versions in the same language (say Spanish for Spain and for Mexico) with no hreflang to tell them apart.

How much does one more language add to the cost?

As an order of magnitude, 20 to 40 % on top of the project when done properly: it is not just translating, it is duplicating templates, revisiting layout (German takes more space) and keeping the content current.

Can I launch in one language and add the rest later?

Yes, and it is often the sensible move. What matters is that the URL structure is ready from day one, so you do not have to redirect the whole site later.

Which language should be the main one?

The one your actual market uses, not your favourite. For a local Girona business that is usually Spanish or Catalan; for one that lives off tourism, English sometimes deserves the home page.

Conclusion

Multilingual done right is an architecture decision, not a plugin. Own URLs, reciprocal hreflang, copy written in each language, and a new language only when you can sustain it. If you are weighing the jump, this is how we approach multilingual web design, or tell us about your case.