How to add an alternative language on website? (leveraging authority)

[masterjoe]

Hi webmasters,

I currently have a website with quite a lot of substantial content. I've recently become aware that there is a large portion of potential customers who from Spanish speaking countries that are specifically interested in what I sell.

I have been trying to find a solution that will:

Allow people to find the content in their native language from Google

Leverage the current website authority to avoid building a second website

I am considering hiring someone fluent to translate all my content, as I use a lot of metaphors and things that won't easily be translated automatically. I of course do not want to use a simple "Google translate" version of the article, however, if this can potentially help with SEO then it could be worth it for the time being.

I was curious what my options actually are in this situation.

Thank you in advance for any help :)

[aakk9999]

I am considering hiring someone fluent to translate all my content, as I use a lot of metaphors and things that won't easily be translated automatically.

Definitely a way to go! Automatically translated web pages never leave a good impression on visitors and properly translated and optimised pages will have a better chance to rank.

If you want to keep the content on the current website, you could use language folder (e.g. www.example.com/es/ ) and translate all at once or bit by bit. For pages that have translation, you can have language choice in the header somewhere. Also, for these pages you would add rel alternate hreflang in the head section of the page.

Google has a help section on multilingual sites, if you have not read it then here is the link:

Multi-regional and multilingual sites
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en [support.google.com]