Bilingual Website in German and English: Content, Cost and SEO

If you run your business in Germany and your customers include people who prefer German, you need at least some German pages. Many international founders start with an English-only site, which works well for expat and international clients. It works less well for local customers, German companies' purchasing teams and anyone who searches in German.

You don't have to mirror every page. Start with the pages where people decide whether to contact you: home, services, about and contact. Give each language its own URLs (for example /en/ and /de/), connect the versions with hreflang, and let visitors switch language themselves instead of redirecting them automatically. That is how Google's documentation describes it.

The cost most people underestimate is the ongoing one. Every new service, price change or team update now happens twice.

Do you need German as well as English?

Ask who actually reads your site, and who you want to reach. A German version usually makes sense if one of these applies:

• You serve local customers in Germany, not just the international community.
• You sell to German companies, where the people who approve a purchase may prefer German.
• You want to be found by people searching in German.
• Enquiries arrive in German, or customers ask whether you speak German.

If your audience is genuinely international and English-speaking, for example a remote-first software consultancy, an English-only site can be the right choice. A half-maintained German version with outdated prices looks worse than none.

What to translate: a planning table

Use this as a starting point for a typical small business site. Adjust the "German" column to your audience.

On the Impressum: § 5 DDG, the German law that requires it, says the information must be easy to recognise, directly reachable and permanently available. We did not find a rule in the statute on which language the Impressum or privacy policy must be in. Whether you translate your legal texts is therefore a question for a lawyer. Either way, link them from the footer of both language versions.

For how many pages a small site needs in the first place, see which pages a small business website needs.

Translate or adapt?

A good German page is rarely a literal copy of the English one. German-speaking readers use different terms, ask different questions and search with different words. Check every page against this list:

• Tone decided: formal "Sie" or informal "du". "Sie" is the safer default for most business audiences; "du" can suit a young, informal brand. Pick one and keep it consistent.
• Prices unambiguous: net or gross, with or without VAT (Umsatzsteuer).
• Contact expectations clear: do you reply in German? By phone as well, or only by email?
• Forms, error messages, confirmation emails and auto-replies translated too.
• Date, number and phone formats familiar to the reader (German uses a comma for decimals).
• Page titles and descriptions written separately for search in each language.
• Each page entirely in one language, with no English leftovers in navigation or footer.

A useful test comes from Google's guidance on helpful content: after reading, does someone know enough to achieve their goal? For a German services page, that means a local prospect understands what you offer and how to reach you.

Machine translation is fine as a first draft. Have the result reviewed by someone fluent in German who understands your field. Google's spam policies name automated translation of copied content as one way of mass-producing pages with little value for users, which they treat as scaled content abuse. That is not a ban on machine translation, but it is a clear signal that unreviewed bulk translation is a poor approach.

URL structure: which option fits?

Google recommends separate URLs for each language version, so visitors and search engines can tell them apart. It advises against switching content language only through cookies or browser settings.

For a small business site, subdirectories are almost always the practical choice. Google describes them as easy to set up and low-maintenance.

If your existing English pages move under /en/ to make room for German, all current addresses change and you need redirects from the old URLs. Our guide to planning a website redesign shows how. Alternatively, the English pages keep their current URLs and only the German version is added under /de/.

hreflang in plain words

hreflang is a note in the page's code that tells search engines: "This page also exists in another language, here." Google can then show searchers the version in their language. Visitors never see it.

The key rules according to Google:

• Both directions: each language version lists itself and every other version. If the return link is missing, Google ignores the annotations.
• Language codes: use ISO 639-1 language codes such as "en" and "de". A region can be added, such as "en-GB", but a country code on its own is invalid. Google notes that "UK" has no effect in hreflang; for users in the UK, use "en-GB".
• x-default: a reserved value for the page to show when no language matches, such as a language selector or your default version.
• Full addresses: linked URLs must be fully qualified, including https.
• Three equivalent methods: in the page's HTML head, in the HTTP header or in the XML sitemap. Google treats them as equivalent.

For a pair of pages, both carry the same three annotations:

One point is often misunderstood: Google doesn't use hreflang to detect a page's language; it looks at the content. hreflang doesn't replace a real translation. It only helps show the right version to the right person.

Language switching without automatic redirects

Many sites redirect visitors based on IP address or browser language. Google advises against it: location data is unreliable, and automatic redirects can stop both visitors and search engines from seeing all versions. Think of an English-speaking customer in Hamburg who keeps being sent to German pages.

A visible language switcher works better, usually in the top corner. It should lead to the equivalent page in the other language, not to the home page. Someone on "Services" who picks "Deutsch" should land on "Leistungen".

What a second language costs

Honest flat prices are rare here, because the cost depends on a few factors you can plan:

• Number of translated pages: five German pages are very different from a full copy of the site.
• Who translates: you, a professional translator, or machine translation with review. Check whether a quote includes translation or expects you to supply finished text.
• Technical work: language switcher, hreflang, forms and automatic emails in two languages, and long German words that need room in navigation and buttons.
• Ongoing upkeep: every later change has to be made in both languages. Budget time or money for it.

At Ichii, the business website with up to 10 pages for €790 net (plus VAT), one-time, includes one language. Extra languages are quoted separately; we clarify the scope in the initial call. For the wider picture of what drives website costs, see what a business website costs.

Your next step

Copy the planning table and mark which pages really need a German version and who will supply the text. With that list, the effort for a second language can be priced concretely. To see what our business website includes and what is quoted separately, visit the business website page.