Multi-language website: Spanish, Basque and English without breaking SEO

In the Basque Country, many businesses need websites in Spanish, Basque and English. Most do it wrong — auto-translation plugin, broken URLs, SEO penalty. Here's how to do it right.

The three typical mistakes

1. Auto-translation plugin (Google Translate widget): Google ignores translated content. Doesn't index anything. You don't rank in English or Basque.

2. Subdomains without hreflang: `en.yoursite.com` without `hreflang` tags → Google doesn't know which to show each user.

3. Translating only menus: content stays in Spanish but navigation is in English. High bounce rate.

How to do it right

URL structure: language subfolders `/es/`, `/en/`, `/eu/`. Each page has its own URL per language.

Proper hreflang: on each page, `` for each language, plus `x-default`.

Genuinely translated content: human-written or reviewed. Machine translation → you rank at 0.

Per-language metadata: title, description, OG tags each in its language.

Basque: specifics

• Declensions: "Bilbo" → "Bilbon". Cities are declined. Otherwise it sounds like a translator.
• Terms: "webgunea" (website), "diseinatzailea" (designer). Don't use anglicisms when there's a Basque term.
• Euskera batua: use the standard, not dialects, unless your audience is very local.

A well-done trilingual website gives you 3× more Google attack surface. A badly-done one penalises you in all three.