Globally expanding your business represents a growth opportunity different from many other Squarespace sites. Users commonly operate on a single-language approach, which misses the chance to connect with other audiences through Squarespace multilingual options. After all, consumers typically prefer to browse in their native language, and this makes multilingual SEO on your Squarespace site an essential aspect.

This guide will explore how to implement multilingual SEO on your Squarespace website, overcome the platform's limitations, and create a global digital presence. As a collaboration between Weglot and SEOSpace, this resource combines translation expertise with SEO knowledge to provide you with a strategy for growing your website.

Why Your Squarespace Site Needs a Multilingual Strategy

The numbers show the potential of running international markets. English is popular as a 'lingua franca', but represents only a portion of global internet users. As such, operating only in English means your Squarespace site ignores swathes of potential visitors.

This language barrier impacts more than visibility. Research suggests that three-quarters of online shoppers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. Nearly half will never purchase from websites in other languages.

The Know Your Lemons Foundation implemented a Squarespace multilingual content strategy and saw phenomenal traffic increases in certain markets. Part of this growth is the result of discoverable content in local search results.

From an SEO perspective, Squarespace multilingual implementation creates opportunities to capture search traffic across different regions. Rather than competing for English-language keywords, your site can target terms in other languages.

In turn, this can achieve higher rankings with less effort. This diversification could expand your reach and reduce your dependency on a single market.

Navigating the Fundamentals of Multilingual SEO

Before diving into Squarespace-specific implementations, it's crucial to understand that effective multilingual SEO is more than basic translation. In fact, a robust multilingual SEO strategy incorporates several key elements:

Proper technical setup. This includes implementing the correct URL structure (typically using subdirectories or subdomains), adding hreflang tags to help search engines understand language relationships between pages, and creating separate sitemaps for each language version.
Content localization. You should look to adapt content to account for cultural nuances, local references, and regional terminology. The goal is to ensure your content resonates with each target audience.
Local keyword research. Search behavior will vary across cultures and languages. Thorough keyword research in each target language identifies the most effective terms.
Regional backlink strategies. Building backlinks from websites in your target regions signals to search engines that your content is relevant to those local audiences.

Finally, server location considerations are less critical than in the past. However, having servers located close to your target audience can improve page load times and potentially benefit local SEO.

Search engines—Google, for instance—attempt to serve content in a preferred language. The signals for this include the user's location, language settings, and search history. However, it can create both opportunities and challenges.

Good implementation can capture this targeted traffic. However, poor implementation can confuse search engines, potentially resulting in the wrong language version showing up in search results or content being flagged as duplicate.

Squarespace provides an elegant, user-friendly platform for website creation, but it presents several specific challenges when implementing multilingual SEO. There's no way for visitors to switch languages, there currently isn’t a real integrated translation tool, and Squarespace's structured templates can make it difficult to implement custom code needed for multilingual functionality.

What's more, Squarespace offers less flexibility in creating optimal URL structures for multilingual implementation. Combining all of this with the manual work that maintaining visual consistency across language versions will require, you'll need a suitable solution for the job.

Common Misconceptions About Multilingual SEO

Misconception	Fact
The Google Translate widget is sufficient for multilingual SEO	The Google Translate widget doesn't create indexable translated pages. Search engines can't discover or index these translations, which provides no SEO benefit.
Creating duplicate sites for each language works best	This approach creates large maintenance issues and dilutes domain authority. Instead, a single domain with language-specific subdirectories or subdomains can work better.
Automatic translation produces low quality results	Neural machine translation is improving. Services such as Weglot use translation engines that provide reliable first-layer translation with the option for manual refinement.
You must translate everything at once	A phased translation approach often works better, focusing first on high-value pages and expanding coverage gradually.
Multilingual versions will cannibalize main site rankings	Properly implemented `hreflang` tags tell search engines which language version to show to which users, preventing competition between versions.

Squarespace Multilingual Capabilities and Essential SEO Elements

At its core, Squarespace provides some basic functionality that can support multilingual efforts:

You can use multiple pages to theoretically build parallel sites in different languages.
You're able to leverage custom code injection areas to add necessary multilingual elements.
Basic SEO settings for page titles and descriptions are configurable for different language versions.

However, these native features fall far short of a complete multilingual solution. French design agency L'Équipe Créative needed to serve both French and English-speaking clients through its Squarespace site.

Using Squarespace's native capabilities resulted in a disjointed user experience and poor search visibility for its English content. Eventually, the team implemented a third-party solution—Weglot—to address these shortcomings.

Regardless of the platform you use, there are several key technical SEO elements for successful Squarespace multilingual SEO:

URL structure. The most common approaches for multilingual URL structures are subdirectories (example.com/fr/), subdomains (fr.example.com), and country-specific domains (example.fr). Subdirectories are the most practical for Squarespace sites.

Hreflang tags. These critical HTML tags tell search engines which language you're using on a specific page, and the available alternative languages. Poor implementation means search engines may struggle to serve the right language version to your users.
Metadata optimization. Each language version of your site needs its own optimized metadata, such as title tags, meta descriptions, and social metadata.

Technical implementation alone isn't sufficient, though. There are several User Experience (UX) factors, such as language switcher placement, site loading speed, and mobile responsiveness. True localization goes beyond translation to include currency and payment method adaptations, date, time, and measurement format localization, and cultural sensitivity in your imagery.

Overall, these elements can combine to create an authentic local experience that both users and search engines recognize and reward.

Implementing Multilingual SEO on Squarespace with Weglot

Given Squarespace's multilingual limitations, a third-party solution such as Weglot provides an effective tool for the job. This is far more preferable than any manual approach, as it saves time, includes maintainability, and doesn't require technical expertise.

Weglot integrates with Squarespace through its dedicated extension, which will work with any Squarespace template. It detects all content on your Squarespace site, then translates it automatically. This includes dynamic elements, and ensures complete translation coverage without the need for manual input.

The first task involves heading to the Language and Region > Site Languages > Multilingual screen within Squarespace and finding the Weglot extension:

Once you connect, you'll need to sign up for a Weglot account then choose your original and target languages. Once you click the Save button, you will have a Squarespace multilingual website.

Under the hood, Weglot creates language-specific URLs with proper structure, implements hreflang tags for you, and preserves and translates metadata across all of your language versions. It also adds a language switcher to your site that you can further style to match your design.

From here, you can head to your Weglot Dashboard to manage translations

The setup takes minutes, even if you factor in customization using Weglot's Visual Editor. This lets you edit translations in place on your live site:

However, implementing the technical foundation is only the first step. Developing a strategic approach to content translation and localization is equally important for multilingual SEO success.

A Content Strategy for Succeeding with Squarespace Multilingual SEO

Rather than attempting to translate your entire site at once, a phased approach based on SEO impact yields better results:

High-traffic pages first. Begin by translating pages that already receive significant traffic in your primary language. Use analytics data to identify these pages.
Business-critical pages. Prioritize product pages, service descriptions, and lead generation pages that directly drive conversions.
High-conversion pages. Pages with strong conversion rates deserve early translation as they're likely to perform well in other languages too.
Top-performing blog content. Blog posts that rank well in your primary language may have similar potential in target languages.
Legal and trust pages. While less exciting, privacy policies, terms of service, and other trust elements should eventually be translated to maintain compliance and build credibility.

This strategic approach lets you capture international traffic fast while spreading out your translation costs. A modern translation approach will use a budget-friendly hybrid model that uses a first layer of machine translation.

Weglot undertakes some administration on your behalf as well. It automatically detects changes to your primary language content and translates them. You can then review these translations and oversee translation statuses across your whole website from the Weglot Dashboard.

From there, you can refine the translations using professionals or bilingual team members, focusing on high-visibility content (such as headlines and CTAs), industry-specific terminology through the Glossary, brand messaging and voice, and culturally sensitive content.

For the latter, you can use SEOSpace's tools to conduct keyword research. Doing this specifically in your target languages and regions will help you find what local users actually search for. Also consider whether images, case studies, and examples need to adapt to resonate with local audiences.

This also goes for tone and style adjustments across your content, such as the balance between formal and casual language. Even your CTA elements might need to change based on the cultural context of your target market.

Measuring the Success of Your Multilingual SEO Efforts

Implementing multilingual SEO represents an investment. As such, optimization is key for demonstrating a Return on Investment (ROI) and guiding your future efforts.

Our advice is to track language-specific organic traffic to see how traffic from each language market grows over time. Google Analytics will let you segment traffic by language and location.

Also, monitor regional keyword rankings to see how your pages rank for target keywords in each language and region. SEOSpace can help you track rankings across multiple languages and search engines.

Further to this, you can see if visitors from different language segments convert at different rates. This might indicate improvements in certain language versions.

Comparing engagement metrics such as bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session across language versions will also be beneficial. SEOSpace also offers ways to track multilingual SEO performance, which includes language-specific rank tracking and competitor analysis.

Regular analysis will help identify opportunities for refinement and optimization, which ensures your multilingual investment will deliver.

Weglot Can Help You Implement Squarespace Multilingual SEO!

Expanding your Squarespace site into multiple languages represents one of the most significant growth opportunities available. While Squarespace has limited native capabilities for multilingual implementation, combining solutions such as Weglot and SEOSpace can bridge this gap.

Weglot will provide the translation infrastructure and technical implementation, while SEOSpace will provide the tools to monitor, measure, and optimize your multilingual SEO performance over time.

You can check out Weglot with a 14-day free trial, then upgrade to a premium subscription starting from only $17 per month. It also comes with a 15-day money-back guarantee.

Squarespace Multilingual SEO: Attract Global Customers 2025