Bilingual websites in Slovak and English: URLs, hreflang and translations that rank
How we structure a Slovak and English website so both versions are found, translated well and do not compete with each other in search.
Our own site runs in English and Slovak, and every blog post is now published in both languages. Done well, a bilingual site reaches two audiences. Done badly, it creates duplicate pages, confused search results and clumsy sentences that make a studio look careless. Here is the approach we use.
Give each language its own address
Use one URL pattern for both languages, such as /en/blog/post-name and /sk/blog/post-name. Search engines and visitors can then see which version belongs to which language, and each page has a stable address to share.
Tell search engines which pages belong together
Every translated page should link to its counterpart with hreflang tags, for example hreflang='sk' and hreflang='en', plus a fallback with x-default. The tags tell search engines to show the Slovak page to Slovak users and the English page to everyone else, instead of treating the two as copies.
Keep the slugs in plain ASCII
Slovak letters such as č, š, ž or ô are percent-encoded in URLs, which makes them hard to read, copy and share. Use how-to-choose-ecommerce-platform rather than a long encoded string, and translate the slug as well as the title.
Translate, do not just convert
- Write native titles and descriptions. A search snippet in Slovak should use the words Slovak people actually type, which are not always a literal translation of the English keywords.
- Localise the details. Use Slovak date formats, correct quotation marks and number formats, and check every figure and unit.
- Publish both versions together. A missing translation looks unfinished and leaves visitors without an answer.
- Review machine translation before publishing, especially technical terms and calls to action.
If you need help setting up a bilingual site or a multilingual blog, get in touch with our team.