Customers buy in their own language. A German version for the German market is not a luxury, it is a requirement.
If you work with customers in Germany, Switzerland or Slovenia, they search on Google in their language and buy from sites they understand. A multilingual website is not a luxury for big companies: it is the cheapest way to enter a new market.
How it is structured
Each language has its own URL, e.g. site.com/de/ for German and site.com/fr/ for French. Google indexes them as separate pages and shows them in the right country.
What hreflang is
A technical note in the code that tells Google: "this page is the German version of that page". Without it, Google might show a Swiss customer the Albanian version. With it, everyone sees their own language.
Why not automatic translation
Automatic translation dropped onto a page is not indexed as real content and often produces awkward sentences. Texts should be written for that market, with the terms customers use there.
Management
A good panel lets you fill the languages step by step: start with Albanian and English, add German when you are ready, and the site automatically shows the version that exists.
The result: a customer from Zurich finds your site, reads it in German and writes to you on WhatsApp. No middleman.
Source: Google – Localized versions · Photo: Unsplash