Localization on a site that is already ranking on google

Design help Localization
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Hi!

I am working on a client project and have some questions on whether webflow’s native localization is my best option and how to go on about their unique situation.

Their current site is sellwave.se. For whatever reason sellwave.com redirects to sellwave.se. But .se is ranked right now.

In the process of a redesign and they would like to keep their ranking but would like to add a few languages (english would now be their primary lenguage, and swedish as secondary with plans to add other nordic languages later).

Im not really sure whats the best way to go on about this. As webflow localization seems expensive for this project. But also - is it possible that i make it so that sellwave.com is the primary page and based on the visitor’s local it shows sellwave.com/se or sellwave.com/no while keeping the seo rankings?

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You can, but it’s going to be a lot of work.

sellwave.se is not currently built in Webflow, so you’ll see some differences just to to page structure and content positioning. But overall if you mirror the content, page titles, METAs, headings and base content you should rank very similarly.

Also, if you’re making English the primary locale, and using machine translation, the Swedish may change unless you hand-copy the translations in. Still, it can be done, but more variation potential. This won’t necessarily disrupt your SEO but you’ll likely see some changes.

The process is;

  • Build your new site in English, match your se site page-for-page, use the CMS where it makes sense… blog, products, etc.
  • Translate the content manually, I guess? Since en will be your primary. **
  • Create the SE and NO locales. You’ll need Adv localization if you want localized URLs.
  • Then, build a redirector from sellwave.se to the corresponding new pages. In most cases the paths can just be prefixed with /se/ if you’ve kept the same paths, but any CMS content will be e.g. /se/blogg/...

** You might clone the site and test making en your secondary and then see if you can switch it to primary after, but… not sure what the impacts would be even if you can do it. You may also be stuck with /en/ as your Eng path, which isn’t necessarily bad.

I think I’d build the EN site first and run it in parallel for a bit before merging them. Let it get some SEO of its own and then merge them after. This is better thought of as two projects rather than one.

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thanks for the answer @memetican ! basically, its gonna be a revamp, so some of the stuff you mentioned is not gonna be possible - the home page’s structure will be different. so i guess not much i can do about that.

now i have a new question - what solution to use for this project?

i will probably post this question separately, but from what i understand - webflow’s freshly rolled out native localization would probably be the best. but it seems a bit pricey for my client.

here is what i need for this site:

  • automatic translations for the cms items: since we are gonna be posting new blog posts on a weekly basis (probably just once a week)
  • localized seo
  • machine powered translations for the static pages (but also will need to make adjustments manually to that just to ensure the translations are solid)
  • localized urls
  • Automatic visitor routing

but it seems a bit expensive. from what i see if english is my primary language, and i add 3 languages using webflow’s native solution - thats gonna cost me 3*29$ a month…?

the cheaper plan seems alright, but i need localized urls - which are a part of the advanced localization plan.

also, from what i saw - i could take care of the Automatic visitor routing with custom code. but the localized urls… any cheaper alternative?

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