How to translate your website into Spanish
Two languages, one site.
Decide what Google sees first.
To translate your website into Spanish, choose the pages Spanish speakers actually need, pick one kind of Spanish, get a draft, and have a fluent person review it before it goes live. Then add a language switcher people can find. One decision shapes the rest: if the Spanish pages must show up in Google, each needs its own URL. If visitors only need to read along, a translation layer such as Builderify Translations is enough.
By the Builderify team
?lang=es link opens it in Spanish
03 Google still reads the English
How to translate your website into Spanish
in five decisions.
Most of the work is deciding, not translating. Make these five calls before anyone writes a word of Spanish, and the rest goes quickly.
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01
Choose the pages
Start with what a Spanish-speaking customer needs to buy, book or ask a question: navigation, the homepage, your main service or product pages, contact, forms and checkout. Old blog posts can wait.
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02
Pick one Spanish
For customers in the US, write the Spanish most of them read every day, which leans Latin American. For customers in Spain, write Spain's. Then keep it consistent.
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03
Decide whether Google needs it
If you want Spanish pages to rank for Spanish searches, each one needs its own URL. If Spanish is for people already on your site, a translation layer is quicker.
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04
Draft, then review
Get a first draft from a machine or a translator, then have a fluent speaker read every line, ideally someone who knows your trade and your customers.
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05
Make it findable and test it
Add a visible language switcher on every page, then run a real enquiry, booking or order in Spanish from start to finish.
Why a Spanish version of your website
is worth the effort.
Spanish is by far the most common language after English in American homes. The latest figures, from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2025 1-year estimates, table S1601, count people aged five and over:
For the 17.3 million, an English-only page can be the reason they call a competitor instead. For everyone else, Spanish is simply the language of home. Want to know whether your own visitors are in the US, Mexico or Spain? User Journey shows the country of every visitor.
Which Spanish should
your website use?
The one your customers read. Every Spanish speaker understands the others, but small differences in grammar, vocabulary and number formats tell readers whether a page was written for them.
Customers in the US
Write clear, neutral Spanish that leans Latin American and avoids slang from any one country. Your readers may have roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central or South America; a reviewer from your actual customer base matters more than a dictionary.
Customers in Mexico or Latin America
Latin American Spanish, ideally checked by someone from the country you sell to most. If you sell to one country, write for that one.
Customers in Spain
Spain's Spanish: vosotros for informal “you all”, Spain's vocabulary, and euro prices written the way Spain writes them.
| On your site | Latin America and the US | Spain |
|---|---|---|
| “You”, to several people | ustedes, always | vosotros when informal, ustedes when formal |
| Everyday words | computadora, celular | ordenador, móvil |
| Prices and decimals | A decimal point: $12.50 in Mexico and the US | A decimal comma: 12,50 € |
| hreflang code, if you publish pages | es-US, es-MX or plain es | es-ES or plain es |
The Real Academia Española’s Diccionario panhispánico de dudas notes that the vosotros forms are not used in the Americas, the Canary Islands or parts of Andalucía. Google’s hreflang documentation supports ISO country codes only, so the common “Latin American Spanish” code es-419 is not supported there. USAGov, which publishes in both languages, notes that Spanish varies by region and keeps its writers consistent with shared glossaries and style guides. A one-page glossary of your own product terms does the same job for a small site.
Three ways to make a bilingual website,
and what Google sees in each.
Every method falls into one of three groups. The question that separates them is whether each Spanish page has an address of its own that a search engine can fetch.
| Route | How it works | Spanish in Google? | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Separate translated pages | Spanish copies of your pages at their own URLs, usually a subfolder such as /es/, linked to the English ones with hreflang. |
Yes. Each page can be crawled and ranked on its own. | Spanish searches matter to you, and you can keep two sets of pages up to date. |
| A translation plugin or proxy | Software that translates your pages and, depending on the product and plan, serves each language at its own URL or only in the browser. | Only with URLs per language. Check what your plan does. | You want URLs per language without building every page by hand. |
| A browser-side layer | A script swaps the text on the page for the visitor after it loads. The address stays the same. | No. Search engines index the original language. | Spanish is for people already on your site: customers, support, booking and checkout help. |
What Google’s own documentation says
Read on 30 October 2026. On WordPress, the GTranslate alternative guide compares plugins that publish indexed language URLs; on Shopify, Translate & Adapt’s language limits decide how far the built-in route goes.
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Separate URLs
Google “recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page rather than using cookies or browser settings to adjust the content language on the page.” It lists URL parameters such as ?loc=de as “Not recommended”. Source
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Visible text, not code
Google “uses the visible content of your page to determine its language” and does not use code-level signals such as the lang attribute. Source
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hreflang both ways
Each language version “must list itself as well as all other language versions”; links that are not returned are ignored. Source
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Machine translation
In June 2025 Google dropped its advice to block automatically translated pages with robots.txt, as reported by Search Engine Journal. Its spam policies still count “translating” among the automated transformations used to mass-produce pages with little value. Source
Machine translation vs human translation:
which one does your site need?
Usually both, in that order. A machine gives you a fast first draft; a fluent person decides whether it says what you mean. What matters is which lines get the most careful read.
- Fast and cheap, and often fine for plain descriptive sentences.
- Weak on short labels with no context: “Book” can come back as a noun, “Free” as libre when you meant gratis.
- Translates brand and product names unless told not to, and picks tú or usted inconsistently.
- Cannot tell you when a sentence is technically right but sounds wrong to your customers.
- Catches meaning, tone and the regional word your customers actually use.
- Can rewrite rather than translate. USAGov calls this transcreation, writing the message so it lands the same way in both languages.
- Costs more and takes longer, and every later edit needs the same person again.
- Worth it most where a wrong word costs money: prices, guarantees, forms and legal pages.
The middle path most small sites take
Machine draft for everything, a fluent review for everything visitors act on, and a professional translator for the legal pages and anything you would not want to explain to a customer twice. For what each option tends to cost, see the website translation cost guide.
A Spanish version of your site
with one script tag.
Builderify Translations is the browser-side route, in 27 languages, Spanish included. It works on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Framer and plain HTML. Squarespace owners can follow the Squarespace translation guide.
- 01Add the script tag to your site's head, switch Translations on and add Spanish.
- 02Turn training on. As people browse, the snippet reports the text it finds, each piece stored once with the page it came from.
- 03In the workbench, write each Spanish line or edit a draft, flag anything that needs a second look, and ignore brand names. Nothing reaches a visitor while it is still a draft.
- 04Publish. Approved lines become a cached dictionary that the snippet applies on the visitor's next page load.
- 05Show the language switcher with your own label, and keep checkout or admin paths out of the queue with Exclude paths.
The page title, meta description and the og: and twitter: title and description tags are translated in the browser too, so the visitor's tab reads in Spanish.
When a page is shown in Spanish, the snippet sets <html lang="es">, so browsers and screen readers know the language has changed.
Add ?lang=es to any page address and it opens in Spanish. The choice is remembered on later pages, and the visitor is not shown the language suggestion. Use it in Spanish emails, flyers and QR codes.
A visitor whose browser prefers Spanish is offered it once, until they choose a language or close the suggestion.
On most platforms, your original pages: the script swaps the text in the browser, with no separate Spanish URLs and no hreflang tags, so do not expect Google to index the Spanish version as its own page. On WordPress, turn on the Builderify plugin's SEO translations and each Spanish page gets its own URL, such as /es/about/, sent already translated by your server, with hreflang links and sitemap entries, so it can be indexed and rank.
Need Spanish pages in Google and a translated site? Do both. Build real Spanish pages, with hreflang, for the few that should rank in Spanish searches, keep their paths out of the training queue, and let Builderify translate everything else for visitors who are already there.
How big is the Spanish version
of your website?
Paste the text of a page, or a few pages one after another, plain text or HTML source. The counter gives you the word count a translator will quote on, an estimate of how many strings Builderify would collect, and what those strings cost in Spanish. Nothing you paste leaves this page.
- Words
- 67
- Strings to translate
- 14
- Lines of text
- 16
- Repeats counted once
- 1
- Skipped: numbers, phone numbers, links
- 1
Page loads with the widget on them use credits too: 10 per 1,000. Packs are one-time purchases that never expire.
How the counter estimates strings
Each line of text counts as one block: a heading, a menu item, a button, a paragraph. Pasted HTML is split at block tags such as paragraphs, headings, list items, links and buttons. Builderify collects a whole block as one string and stores identical wording once, however many pages use it, so repeated lines count once. Lines that are mostly numbers, phone numbers, email addresses or links are skipped, as Builderify skips them. Translation rows are priced on Builderify’s rate card at 0.1 credits per string per language. AI drafts, if you use them, are charged separately in credits based on what the AI model used, and an edited sentence becomes a new string.
Why the real number will be a little higher
Pasted text misses what you do not see: page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text and form placeholders, which Builderify can collect too. Words, on the other hand, are counted on everything you paste, repeats included, the way most per-word quotes start; many translators discount repeated text, so ask. For pricing beyond this page, the pricing page has the full rate card, and packs start at $9.
What to translate first
on a Spanish website.
Follow the customer’s path, not the sitemap. A Spanish homepage that leads to an English form loses the visitor at the worst moment.
Navigation, buttons and footer
Short, on every page and the easiest to get wrong without context. Translate them once and every page improves.
Your key pages
The homepage, your main services or products, prices and contact. These are where Spanish-speaking visitors land and decide.
Forms
Labels, placeholders, error messages and the thank-you message. Then check what arrives: answers may come back in Spanish.
Emails
Confirmations, receipts and autoresponders are sent by your shop, booking or form tool, not shown on the page, so a page translator never touches them. Check each tool's settings.
Checkout
Often run by your platform rather than your theme, so its language is set in the platform's own settings. Test it with a real order.
Help and policies
Shipping, returns, FAQs, then privacy and terms. See the next section before translating anything legal.
What people forget when they make
a Spanish version of a website.
Dates
Spanish puts the day first: 31/10/2026 is 31 October. A US-style 10/11/2026 means 10 November to many Spanish readers, so write the month as a word, such as 10 de noviembre, wherever a date matters.
Currency and numbers
Say which currency you mean if you sell across borders: several Spanish-speaking countries also use the $ sign for their pesos. Write numbers the way your audience does: $12.50 in Mexico and the US, 12,50 € in Spain.
Phone numbers and addresses
Add the country code if you serve people abroad, and keep phone and address formats your forms accept. A form that rejects a Mexican number is a dead end.
Legal pages
Whether you need Spanish versions of your privacy policy, terms or refund policy depends on where you sell and which laws apply. Ask a lawyer, including which language version governs. This page is not legal advice.
Text in images, PDFs and video
Words inside images and PDFs are not text on the page, so no page translator reaches them. Replace or caption the ones that matter.
Who answers in Spanish
If the site invites Spanish questions, someone has to reply in Spanish, by email, phone or live chat. Decide who before you launch.
How to test the Spanish version
before you announce it.
Give it an hour, on a phone as well as a laptop, and ideally with a Spanish speaker who has never seen the site.
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1
Open it in Spanish
Visit the /es/ page, or add ?lang=es to a page address if you use Builderify. Switch back to English and to Spanish again from the switcher.
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2
Read every button on a phone
Spanish sentences often run longer than English ones. Look for labels that wrap, overflow or get cut off.
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3
Complete a real task
Send a form, book a time or place an order in Spanish, then read the emails that follow. Most mistakes hide here.
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4
Look for leftovers
English that slipped through: error messages, cookie and chat widgets, image text, the page title in the browser tab.
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5
Check names and numbers
Brand names unchanged, prices, dates and phone numbers in the right format, and the right currency.
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6
Check what Google can see
For real Spanish pages, use URL Inspection in Search Console and confirm the hreflang links point both ways. For a browser-side layer, expect Google to show the English.
Spanish websites, before you ask.
Only if each Spanish page has its own URL that Google can crawl, ideally linked to the English page with hreflang. Google recommends different URLs for each language rather than cookies or browser settings. On most platforms Builderify's script swaps the text in the visitor's browser, so Google reads your original language and you need real translated pages for Spanish search. On WordPress, with the Builderify plugin's SEO translations on, each Spanish page gets its own URL such as /es/about/, sent already translated by your server with hreflang links and sitemap entries, so it can be indexed.
Use the Spanish your customers read. For customers in the US or Latin America, write clear Latin American Spanish: ustedes rather than vosotros, and words such as computadora rather than ordenador. For customers in Spain, write Spain's Spanish. Whichever you pick, keep it consistent and have someone from that audience review it.
As a first draft, often yes. It struggles with short labels, brand names, tone and words that change meaning by region, so have a fluent person review everything visitors act on: buttons, forms, prices and checkout. Google's spam policies list translating among the automated ways of mass-producing pages that give visitors little value.
A translator usually quotes per word, so count your words first. With Builderify, each string translated into one language costs 0.1 credits on the rate card, and every account gets 250 free credits a month, enough for the translation rows of 2,500 strings in one language before page loads, which use 10 credits per 1,000. AI drafts are charged separately in credits based on what the AI model used. One-time packs start at $9 and never expire.
With Builderify, add ?lang=es to the page address. The page opens in Spanish, the choice is remembered on later pages, and the visitor is not shown the language suggestion. With separate translated pages, link to the Spanish URL itself, such as /es/.
Sources
Checked 30 October 2026
- U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2025 1-year estimates, table S1601: Language Spoken at Home
- Google Search Central Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites (updated 10 December 2025)
- Google Search Central Tell Google about localized versions of your page (updated 21 September 2026)
- Google Search Central Spam policies for Google web search (updated 28 August 2026)
- Search Engine Journal Google removes robots.txt guidance for blocking auto-translated pages (11 June 2025)
- Real Academia Española Diccionario panhispánico de dudas: vosotros
- USAGov Speaking your language: USAGov outreach's approach to bilingual content (31 October 2023)
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