Technical SEO Checklist: Get Your Corporate Site Ready for Search Engines
SEO isn’t just keywords. A practical technical SEO checklist for corporate sites — from indexing and speed to structured data and multilingual setup.
Read moreFor a business selling products or services to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia or Europe, a multilingual website is not a luxury but a necessity. However, building a multilingual site is not just about translating texts and adding a language button. A badly built multilingual site may not appear in search engines at all. Here is a guide to doing it right.
1. Which languages do you need?
Choose languages according to your target markets. For example, Russian may be the priority for a construction company working in Central Asia, and English for a textile manufacturer with international customers. Every language means separate content that has to be maintained; start with as many languages as you actually need.
2. Each language should have its own address
For search engines to see and index each language separately, each language must be published at its own address. Common methods:
| Method | Example | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Subfolder | company.com/en/ | Usually the most practical option for corporate sites |
| Subdomain | en.company.com | May require separate management |
| Country domain | company.kz, company.uz | Strong country-specific signal, more management |
To avoid: setups that change the language only via a cookie or session. Because all languages share the same address, search engines see only the default language.
3. Link languages with hreflang tags
hreflang tells search engines a page’s equivalents in other languages. That way, a user searching in Russian is shown your Russian page and a user searching in Turkish your Turkish page. Every page should list all language versions, including itself, and specify an x-default.
4. Translation quality determines trust
Machine translation can help with a draft, but on a corporate site the texts should be checked by someone who knows the language well. Technical terms, units and currency formats, date formats and forms of address should be adapted to each language.
5. Translate everything, not just the pages
- Menu, button and form labels
- Form error and success messages
- Automatic emails to customers and quote documents
- Page titles and meta descriptions
- Image alt texts
6. Fonts and scripts
For languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, such as Russian, the chosen typeface must support those characters. If it doesn’t, a suitable fallback font should be defined; otherwise headings will look broken. The same applies to right-to-left scripts such as Arabic.
7. Language choice and redirects
Offering visitors a language choice on their first visit and remembering their preference is a good experience. But search engine bots should never be redirected automatically; every language version must be reachable directly at its own address.
8. Sitemap and Search Console
Every language’s pages should be in the sitemap. Fix hreflang errors by monitoring the international targeting and indexing reports in Search Console. For a broader technical list, see our technical SEO checklist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is automatic (machine) translation enough?
It can help with a draft, but on a corporate site the texts should be corrected by a native speaker or a professional translator. Poor translation damages trust.
Should I switch the language automatically based on the browser language?
Rather than forcing a redirect, it is better to offer a language choice and remember the visitor’s preference. Search engine bots should never be redirected automatically.
We build corporate sites published in Turkish, English, German, Russian and Arabic. For our references in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, see our references page or request a quote.
