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Translated Website Launch Checklist: 20 Checks Before You Go Live

By the ResilientLang team · Published · 5 min read

Before you launch, check four things in each language: that every language has its own address, that those addresses point to each other correctly, that the content is reviewed enough to be indexed, and that visitors can switch language and finish their task. The checklist below goes through them in order. It repeats only what we have verified against Google's documentation; where something is judgement, we say so.

A. Addresses and signals

  1. Each language has its own URL. Google recommends different URLs for each language version of a page and describes country-code domains, subdomains and subdirectories as the usual structures; it marks URL parameters as not recommended. Pick one and use it for every language.
  2. No language is served only by cookie or script on a single address. A text swap in the browser gives search engines no page to list. See client-side vs server-side translation and SEO.
  3. hreflang is complete and reciprocal. Every version lists itself and all others; Google says if two pages do not point to each other the annotations are ignored. Add x-default for the fallback version if you have one.
  4. hreflang lives in one place. HTML head, HTTP header or sitemap: Google calls the three equivalent. Do not mix several generators.
  5. Each page has one canonical tag pointing to itself. Do not canonical a translated page to the original, or it can drop out.
  6. The sitemap lists the pages you want indexed, with absolute URLs. A single sitemap is limited to 50 MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs, and a sitemap index can combine files. Google says it ignores priority and changefreq.
  7. Language codes are valid. Use short, standard tags (fr, pt-BR).

B. Content and indexing

  1. Pages are fully translated. Google warns that translating only boilerplate while most content stays in one language can create a bad user experience.
  2. High-risk pages are reviewed. Prices, legal text, checkout. See how to review machine translation.
  3. Unreviewed pages are noindex. Google documents <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the head, and the page must not be blocked by robots.txt or Google cannot see the tag. Using it for drafts is our recommendation, not a Google rule.
  4. Titles and meta descriptions are translated, and unique per page and language.
  5. Image alt text, structured data text and link text are translated where visible.
  6. No automatic redirect by language or location. Google advises avoiding automatic redirects between language versions and not using IP analysis to adapt content.

C. Page language and accessibility

  1. The page declares its language. <html lang="fr"> is required for accessibility (WCAG success criterion 3.1.1 asks that the default language of each page be programmatically determinable). Google says it does not use lang or hreflang to detect the page language, so this is for users and assistive technology, not rankings.
  2. Right-to-left pages set dir="rtl" on the html element, as W3C advises. Check layout, icons and mixed-direction text. See our RTL guide.
  3. The switcher is visible, keyboard-usable and keeps the visitor on the equivalent page.

D. Function and speed

  1. Forms, errors and checkout work in each language. See translating checkout and forms.
  2. Dates, numbers and prices are formatted for each locale. See dates, numbers, currencies and units.
  3. Speed has not regressed. Google's published Core Web Vitals thresholds, as written on web.dev, are Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads. Test a translated page on a phone.
  4. A fallback exists. Decide what visitors see if translations fail to load: the original language, never a broken page. See what happens to translated pages in an outage.

What to submit after launch

  • Verify your site in the search tools you use. Google documents verification by adding a meta tag to the head of your home page; the verification tag must be in the <head>.
  • Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and list it in robots.txt.
  • Consider IndexNow. It is a protocol for telling participating search engines about changed URLs: you host a UTF-8 key file named after your key at the root of your site and send URLs to the endpoint; participating engines share submissions. Which engines participate is not stated on the pages we checked, so confirm it before you rely on it (verify).
  • Watch coverage and international reports over the following weeks, and fix reciprocal-link errors first.

A launch-day routine

  1. Spot-check three pages in each language against the list above.
  2. View the source of one translated page and read its canonical, hreflang and robots tags.
  3. Fetch the sitemap in a browser and open a few URLs from it.
  4. Test the switcher, a form and a purchase path on a phone.
  5. Submit the sitemap. Then leave it alone for a while and look at reports before changing things.

Next step

Take the 20 checks above and mark each pass, fail or not applicable for your first translated language. LgTranslate can help with several of them (language addresses on WordPress, hreflang and sitemaps, noindex for thin pages, a fallback to the original language), but the checklist applies to any tool. Our broader multilingual SEO checklist goes into more depth on each signal.

Key takeaways

  • Give each language its own address, link versions reciprocally and keep one canonical per page.
  • Keep unreviewed or thin pages out of the index until they are ready.
  • Set lang and dir for people and assistive tools, not for ranking.
  • Verify, submit a sitemap and watch reports; do not over-correct in the first days.

Sources

Frequently asked questions

Do I need hreflang before I launch a translated site?

If you publish separate addresses for each language, yes: Google documents hreflang as the way to tell it about the localized versions, and each version must list itself and all others. If your translation only swaps text in the browser on one address, there is nothing to annotate.

Should I submit translated pages to search engines on day one?

Submit once the pages are reviewed and indexable. Pages you have not reviewed can wait behind a noindex tag. Submit a sitemap that lists only the pages you want indexed.

Can I redirect visitors to their language automatically?

Google advises avoiding automatic redirects from one language version to another, and not to use IP analysis to adapt content. Offer a visible switcher, and consider a dismissible suggestion banner instead.

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