Serve your visitors in their own language. With Obelisk you offer your website in multiple languages — for example Dutch and English — each with its own menu and footer.
Automatically the right language
Visitors immediately see the version in their language, and the language button lets them switch with a single click. You do not have to worry about it; the site handles it by itself.
Well organised
Your news items and other content also automatically show only the right language, so duplicate or mismatched content never slips in.
Why multilingual sites perform better in search
Search engines treat each language version as a separate, indexable page, so a well-built multilingual site can rank in more than one country's results — see SEO for how that plays out in practice.
A common use case: a business with visitors from two countries who currently land on a single Dutch-only page and bounce immediately because they don't understand it. Splitting that page into two language versions keeps both audiences on the site.
The switcher itself is a small but important detail — see the language switcher block for how visitors move between versions without losing their place.
Practical tip: translate more than just the visible text. Elements like your cookie banner and form confirmations should switch language too, or the experience feels unfinished.
Deciding which languages are worth the effort
Adding a language is not just a translation task — it is an ongoing commitment, since every future page, form and email needs to be maintained in that language too. Before adding a third or fourth language, look at where your actual visitors and customers come from. A language with a handful of visitors a month rarely justifies the ongoing upkeep, while one representing a real share of your audience usually pays for itself quickly.
It is also worth deciding early whether every page needs every language, or whether some content — a local blog post, a region-specific promotion — is fine staying in one language only. Forcing a full translation of everything often delays launching content that would otherwise go live immediately.
Multilingual sites across different kinds of businesses
An export-focused manufacturer typically needs full parity across languages, since a prospect in any market should see the same product information. A tourism business often needs the opposite: content tailored per language, with local events or offers that don't apply everywhere. An international membership organisation frequently needs full translation only for the core pages — about, membership, contact — while treating news and updates as language-specific.
Whichever pattern fits, being explicit about it up front avoids awkward half-translated pages, which look more unfinished than a page that was deliberately kept in one language.
Common mistakes with translation
The most common mistake is translating the visible page content but forgetting everything around it — error messages, a form's confirmation text, or a newsletter sent to subscribers in the wrong language. These smaller touches are what make a multilingual site feel genuinely native rather than machine-translated.
The second is inconsistent terminology between languages — the same feature or product called something different on different pages of the same language version. A short glossary of key terms, kept consistent across every page, avoids visitors wondering whether two different names mean two different things.
For how each language variant relates to the others technically, including how search engines are told which page belongs to which language, see multilingual content in the knowledge base.
How to ask the assistant
Add English as a second language and translate the homepage, the menu and the footer.