Is having the site in Catalan and Spanish duplicate content?

No. Duplicate content means the same text, in the same language, repeated at two addresses. A translation is a different page for a different audience, and Google treats it as such. What you do need is to declare that one is the other's version using hreflang tags, so the right one is shown to each person.

Which language should be the main one?

The one most of your customers use when they write or call, not the one you prefer. In a neighbourhood business it is usually the one you hear at the counter. If in doubt, watch which language your WhatsApp messages arrive in over a month and decide on that.

Is it worth adding Google's automatic translator to the site?

It can get a visitor out of a bind, but it does not give you a second site. Because the address does not change, that version is neither indexed nor ranked, and machine translation tends to fail precisely on the names of your services, which is what people search for.

Does a site in two languages cost twice as much?

The structure does not, it is part of how we build sites, and the published plans are the same from €100 a month. What adds up is new content: every monthly article has to be written in the second language too, and that is factored into the plan.

Can I add Catalan to a site that is already built?

You can, and it costs more than having planned for it. New addresses have to be created, titles, descriptions and forms translated, hreflang added and anything that moves redirected. That is why we build the second language in from day one on new sites.

A website in Catalan and Spanish: how to do it right

Q: Does the Google profile go in two languages as well?

It does not work the same way: the business profile has no two versions. You write the description in the language you use with most of your customers. What is worth doing is pointing the profile link at the site version in that same language.

It is one of the first questions that comes up when somebody here commissions a website. Having your website in Catalan and Spanish carries no penalty, is not duplicate content and does not cost twice as much. What does happen, and we see it every month, is that it gets built in a way that serves no purpose.

Someone going over website copy on paper before having it in Catalan and Spanish

First: do you need it?

Not always. Before translating anything, look at who you sell to:

A neighbourhood or small-town business with local customers. Both languages help, because people search in one or the other depending on the moment, the device and even the subject.
A company selling to other companies around Barcelona or Girona. Here Catalan shows up mostly as trust: the site speaks the way people speak in the meeting.
You sell outside Catalonia or export. Then the useful second language is probably English, not Catalan.
Public sector or grant applications. There, Catalan stops being optional.

If you want the detailed picture of how the two languages are used, Idescat and the Department of Language Policy publish the survey on language use among the population, the official statistic, released every five years.

The fear of duplicate content, and why it does not apply here

Duplicate content means publishing the same text, in the same language, at two different addresses. A Catalan version and a Spanish one are not the same text: they are translations, and Google treats them as different pages for different audiences. It says so in its documentation on localized versions of your pages.

What can go wrong is Google showing the wrong version, or keeping only one of the two. That is not a penalty: it means you have not told it how they relate to each other. That is what hreflang is for, and we get to it below.

The three ways to build a website in Catalan and Spanish

One address per language for a website in Catalan and Spanish

Each version gets its own address. The usual pattern is yourbusiness.com/ for the main language and yourbusiness.com/ca/ for the other, with every translated page hanging off it. This site works that way.

The advantages: each version can rank on its own, be linked to, be shared over WhatsApp and appear as it is in results. It is the option recommended by Google's guide for multilingual sites, and the only one we have found that holds up over time.

The embedded automatic translator

The little button that translates the page on the fly without changing the address. It is cheap and it is the worst option: because the address does not change, that second version does not exist as far as Google is concerned. It is not indexed, it does not rank, and on top of that it mistranslates exactly what matters most, the names of your services.

If your site has one of those, you do not have a site in two languages. You have one language and an accessory.

A separate domain per language

Two separate sites, each with its own domain. It costs twice as much to maintain and splits your strength between two places starting from zero. It makes sense in very few cases, almost always when they are genuinely different brands rather than the same company.

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What hreflang is, without the jargon

It is a line of code on each page telling Google: "this page has a sibling in the other language, and it lives here." It goes on both addresses, pointing at each other, plus a third line marking which one to show when the searcher's language matches neither.

In terms of what you actually notice: with hreflang set properly, somebody searching in Catalan gets the Catalan page, and somebody searching in Spanish gets the Spanish one. Without it, Google chooses on its own and sometimes gets it wrong. It is one of those things you cannot see on the site that decide quite a lot, as we cover in why your website does not appear on Google.

The detail everyone forgets: if you add a new page in one language and do not translate it, do not half-fit it with hreflang. Better none at all than pointing at a page that does not exist.

Hands leafing through a dictionary to translate the copy of a website

What gets translated besides the pages

This is where most bilingual sites fall short. The home page is in both languages and the rest is not. What genuinely needs translating:

The titles and descriptions of every page, which are what people read in Google.
The addresses. /serveis/disseny-web/ in Catalan, not /ca/services/web-design/.
The forms: labels, error messages and the "thank you" note.
The legal texts, which often stay in one language only.
The blog articles. If you publish one a month, it goes out in both languages or it does not count. How to set that part up is covered in the business blog.
The automated emails that go out after an order or a booking.

The Google profile is a different story: there are no two versions there. You write the description in the language you use with most of your customers, and that is that.

Mistakes we see

Translating only the home page and leaving the rest in one language. The visitor switches language mid-visit and leaves.
The language switcher that always dumps you on the home page. If I am reading an article and change language, I want that article, not to start over.
Machine-translating and not reviewing it. It shows within two sentences and does more harm than not translating.
Mixing both languages on the same page, with the menu in one and the text in the other.
Switching systems and losing the old addresses. If you touch this, do it with redirects, as we explain in migrating your website without losing rankings.

A developer checking both versions of a bilingual website on screen

What a website in Catalan and Spanish costs

The two-language structure is part of how we build sites, so the price does not double. Our published plans are these:

Your Landing, €100 a month. One page, hosting and one mailbox.
Your Website, €200 a month. Up to ten subpages and an article a month.
Basic Presence, €400 a month. Three articles on the site and three on the Google profile, reviews answered and GEO positioning.
Mid Presence, €750, with five and five plus Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns.
Advanced Presence, €1,500, with seven and seven.

Excluding VAT, no lock-in, with website and email migration included. What does add work is the content: every monthly article has to be written in both languages, and that is factored in when the plan is put together. The full breakdown is in how much a website costs.

How we do it

This very site is in Catalan, Spanish and English using the one-address-per-language system. Every page has its sibling declared, every article is published in all three and the switcher leaves you on the same page rather than the home page.

When we build a new site, the second language goes in from day one, because adding it later means redoing the addresses and redirecting the old ones. Doing it twice costs more than doing it right from the start.

The two-minute check

Open your site, switch language and look at the address bar. If it does not change, you do not have two versions. If it changes but has taken you to the home page, the switcher is wrong. And if you did land on the translated page, copy that address, paste it into Google with site: in front and check that Google has it.

If any of that fails and you would like us to look, message us on WhatsApp with your website address. We will tell you what is in place, what is missing and whether it is worth fixing or rebuilding. No strings, same day.

Tell us what you need and we'll give you a price