Shopify - How does Weglot manage your website's SEO

In this article, you'll find how Weglot manages the SEO of your Shopify store to make sure all the language versions of your website are indexed by Google.

Depending on when you've installed Weglot, the method used for your multilingual SEO may not be the same.

The first thing to check is if you're managing a subdomain integration with Weglot. In order to check that, you can simply visit your website in your translated language. If you are managing a subdomain integration, the URL will change. 

For example, if your website is mywebsite.com and you are translating from French to English, the URL of your website will be en.mywebsite.com.

If this is the case, Weglot is managing the SEO like this.

Otherwise, log in to your Shopify admin > App > Weglot Translate. You might see this popup:

This means that the SEO is not set up on your shop, so we recommend you click on "Activate subdomains" and then follow the different steps. Please note that we are available to help you with the process, feel free to contact us at support@weglot.com if needed. 

If you don't have subdomains enabled and if you don't see this popup, it means that your SEO is managed like this.

So to recap, option 1 (SEO with the subdomain integration) and option 2 (no subdomains). You will find the full explanations below. 

1. SEO with the subdomain integration

I. A unique URL for each version of your web page

With this system, your website will have URLs like [language code].yourwebsite.com (for instance fr.yourwebsite.com).

II. Hreflang tags for Google indexing robots

Weglot automatically adds hreflang tags in your source code. These tags let Google know you have different versions of the same page and favor the indexing of these pages. You can find these hreflang tags in the head tag of your website.

Note that with this method, you don't need to edit your sitemap, even if you are already using an SEO app. 

III. Having content translated into the source code and not just dynamically 

Weglot translates content on the server-side, meaning that your content is translated in your source code, whereas a JavaScript translation solution would not be seen or indexed by Google.

IV. Detecting and translating SEO tags

Weglot automatically does that, on the server-side again. 

E.g. Meta-description for the English version of the website

E.g. Meta-description for the French version of the website:  

Weglot follows all the best practices of Google and therefore, with Weglot, all your translated pages will also be indexed and displayed to foreign visitors, without any additional work from the owner of the website.

2. The SEO with the standard app integration

Multilingual SEO best practices guidelines (as per Google here  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en) requires the inclusion of the following key aspects:

I. A unique URL for each version of your web page

Weglot automatically creates a "a/l/[2-letter code]" sub-directory for each translated version of your pages.  Please note that your sub-directories won't be visible by you or your visitors but only by the bots.

E.g. Italian version of the webpage below: 

E.g. French version of the webpage below: 

II. Hreflang tags for Google indexing robots

Weglot automatically adds hreflang tags in your source code. These tags let Google know you have different versions of the same page and favor the indexing of these pages. You can find these hreflang tags in the head tag of your website.  Note that with this method, you don't need to edit your sitemap, even if you're already using an SEO app. 

III. Having content translated into the source code and not just dynamically 

Weglot translates content on the server-side, meaning that your content is translated into your source code whereas a JavaScript translation solution would not be seen or indexed by Google. 

IV. Detecting and translating SEO tags

Weglot automatically does that, on the server-side again. 

E.g. Meta-description for the English version of the website

E.g. Meta-description for the French version of the website:  

Weglot follows all the best practices of Google and therefore, with Weglot, all your translated pages will also be indexed and displayed to foreign visitors, without any additional work of the owner of the website.