Map multilingual search demand before translating your website

List the five to ten tasks that create real business value: request a quote, book a consultation, compare a repair service, check delivery areas or understand an aftercare package. Add the locations you genuinely serve and the customers you can support in each language. A page needs a business purpose before it needs a keyword.

For each task, collect phrases from enquiry emails, call notes, reviews, sales staff and local partners. Keep the original wording. A customer in Spain may ask for a presupuesto, while a German buyer expects an Angebot and Swedish customers may use offert. These are related intentions, but they are not interchangeable labels to paste into every market.

If the website already receives Google impressions, open Search Console’s Performance report. Review a long enough period to reduce weekly noise, then inspect Queries, Pages and Countries. Record relevant phrases even when they have impressions but few clicks: they may reveal wording, an unanswered question or a country where the current page is a poor fit.

Filter by one country and one page or query family at a time. Search Console allows dimensions and comparisons, but it does not show every query: some are omitted for privacy and the table is limited to important rows. Treat the export as evidence from your site, not a complete market census. Never turn one surprising query into a new page without checking that it represents a customer you can serve.

Use Google Trends to compare alternative terms inside the same country and time range. Compare phrases such as holiday rental and vacation rental in one market, or local equivalents suggested by a native speaker. A Trends search term is literal, while a Topic can group a concept across languages. Choose deliberately and note which one you used.

Trends values are normalised and relative, not absolute search volumes. A score of 100 marks the peak within the selected comparison; it does not mean one hundred searches. Low-volume terms may produce no graph. Use Trends to check seasonality and wording direction, then keep customer conversations and Search Console alongside it.

Google Ads Keyword Planner can suggest related terms and lets you narrow ideas by location, language and date range. Access may require a configured Ads account, and its figures are designed for advertising planning. Use them as another signal, not as a promise of organic visits or a reason to publish awkward phrases.

Remove ideas that do not match your offer, location or customer stage. Group the remainder by intent: learning, comparing, booking or urgent help. One strong service page can answer several close variants naturally. Creating a separate thin page for every wording usually makes the site harder to maintain and less helpful to readers.

Give each candidate page a simple score from zero to two for four questions: do customers use this wording, is there search evidence, can the business serve the market, and can the page provide genuinely local information? Eight is a strong first-wave candidate; four may need more research; zero is a clear pause. The numbers organise a discussion rather than manufacture certainty.

For example, a Mallorca marine-repair company may find German searches for Winterlager and English enquiries for winter storage. The useful decision is not which phrase is globally larger. It is whether the company offers the service, can handle the enquiry in that language, and can explain location, boat limits, process, timing and contact clearly on a localised page.

The brief should contain the customer task, chosen terms, market, proof, required questions, next action and words to avoid. Ask a fluent local reviewer to improve tone and terminology, not merely approve grammar. German compound nouns, Scandinavian trade terms and Spanish regional usage can change what sounds natural and trustworthy.

Keep each language on its own URL and link equivalent versions with hreflang. Google recommends separate URLs for language versions and warns against automatic redirection based only on assumed language. The local page should be complete enough to act on: translated navigation followed by an English form or unsupported phone service is not a finished customer journey.

Launch the two or three highest-priority pages, submit the updated sitemap and annotate the publication date. After enough time to gather meaningful data, review queries, countries, impressions, useful enquiries and the questions sales staff still receive. Do not judge a page from a few days or from position alone.

Update the demand map quarterly or when services, locations or language support change. Promote a page when evidence and operational readiness agree; improve it when visitors have a clear unmet question; merge or pause it when the business cannot provide a distinct answer. The goal is a smaller multilingual site that is genuinely useful in every language it offers.