Multilingual SEO Consultant

If your site is bilingual but your traffic isn't, the problem is rarely the content — it's the technical layer. Hreflang clusters break silently. Sibling pages drift apart. Auto-translated copy sends the wrong locale signals. I am Ignacio (IGNAX), Spain-born, Paraguay-based, solo full-stack developer + SEO/AEO specialist, and bilingual EN/ES SEO is my home turf — ignax.dev itself is the live example.

Who is this service for?

  • SaaS companies expanding into LATAM or Spain who need their Spanish site to actually rank.
  • US/UK companies whose Spanish version was bolted on by a translation agency and is now invisible to Google.
  • Multilingual marketing sites whose hreflang is half-implemented and silently broken.
  • Agencies that need a bilingual SEO subcontractor who can also fix the code.

If you are still validating whether multilingual traffic is worth the lift, start with a technical SEO audit — that diagnoses the existing gap before committing to a multilingual build.

What deliverables do you get?

  • Hreflang audit + fix — every URL pair validated, reciprocal links confirmed, x-default set, ISO codes corrected.
  • Sibling pairing report — every translatable page mapped to its canonical sibling; orphans flagged.
  • Locale-corrected copy pass — Quick Answers, H1s, meta descriptions, and FAQ entries reviewed in the target locale (es-PY or es-ES) for register, idioms, and formality.
  • Per-locale llms.txt entries — each language indexed separately so AI engines pull the right version per user.
  • Per-locale sitemap entries with hreflang siblings inline (xhtml:link rel="alternate").
  • International Targeting report in GSC reviewed and any errors resolved.
  • JSON-LD locale tags — inLanguage attributes set correctly on Article, Service, and FAQPage schema.
  • Prioritized P0/P1/P2 fix list with dev-hour estimates.
  • 30-minute walkthrough call + written runbook in the repo.

What tools do you use?

  • Google Search Console International Targeting + Performance segmented by country.
  • Bing Webmaster Tools — Bing serves Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, often forgotten in multilingual setups.
  • Screaming Frog (free tier ≤500 URLs) — bulk hreflang validation, sibling-pair check.
  • Google's hreflang documentation + Schema.org inLanguage — official references.
  • Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free tier) — ranking distribution per country.
  • DeepL Pro + Claude / GPT-4.1 for first-pass translation; never for final-pass SEO copy.
  • Optional paid: Ahrefs Standard or Semrush with country segmentation — only if you already have a seat.

I'm running this exact playbook on ignax.dev itself — see the live experiment for current hreflang health and per-locale indexing numbers.

How does the process work?

  1. Audit call (free, 60 minutes). I crawl your hreflang clusters in advance and bring findings, not boilerplate questions.
  2. Written scope + fixed quote inside 48 hours.
  3. Implementation (week 1). Hreflang clusters rebuilt from a canonicalSlug registry. Sibling pairs aligned. Sitemap regenerated.
  4. Locale-copy pass (week 1–2). Quick Answers, FAQs, and H1s rewritten in the target locale where machine-translation residue is found.
  5. Validation + handover. GSC International Targeting reads clean, hreflang errors at zero, sitemap diffed against previous, runbook delivered.

Working hours: Mon–Fri, 8:00–17:00 PYT (GMT-3). Weekends off. Overlap with US East 7:00–16:00 EST, with Madrid 13:00–22:00 CET.

How much does multilingual SEO cost?

Pricing band: $2,000–$5,000 USD (Gs 12.3M–30.7M). The lower half covers EN ↔ ES on a single-stack site under 100 URLs with hreflang fixes and a locale-copy review. The upper half covers multi-locale (EN + ES + PT or EN + ES + FR) sites with full copy rewrites, multi-template stacks, or WordPress entropy. Hourly outside that band: $30–$70 USD/hr. PYG values approximate, recalculated quarterly. Rate as of 2026-05-27: Gs 6,136.82 / USD. For the SvelteKit playbook see multilingual SEO in SvelteKit.

For agencies — white-label multilingual SEO

Bilingual EN/ES who can also fix hreflang at the code level is a rare combination — agencies frequently outsource this. Day-rate option: $240–$560 USD/day under your brand and NDA. I deliver under your domain, stay invisible to the end client. Common pairing: agency owns strategy and budget; I own the technical layer and the ES copy quality.

What about non-EN/ES locales?

The technical pattern (canonicalSlug + hreflang + per-locale sitemap entries + per-locale JSON-LD inLanguage) scales to any number of languages. I write copy only in EN and ES (the locales I can proofread for register). For Portuguese, German, French, or Japanese, I integrate your translator's output and own the technical layer; you own copy quality.

Ready to talk? Email hello@ignax.dev with your site URL and the locales you target. I run the hreflang audit before our call.

Working hours: Mon–Fri, 8:00–17:00 PYT (GMT-3). Weekends off. Overlap with US East 7:00–16:00 EST, with Madrid 13:00–22:00 CET.

Pricing

USD
$2,000–$5,000
PYG
Gs 12.3M–Gs 30.7M
Timeline
1–2 weeks

PYG values approximate, recalculated quarterly. Rate as of 2026-05-27: Gs 6,136.82 / USD.

For agencies

Available as a white-label senior subcontractor. Standard NDAs welcome. Day-rate option: $240–$560 USD/day depending on stack.

Email hello@ignax.dev

Frequently asked questions

What's the most common multilingual SEO mistake?

Translating with no canonical pairing. Teams ship /blog/post-en and /es/blog/post-es with no shared identifier, no hreflang, and no sitemap pair — Google then treats them as duplicate-ish unrelated pages and ranks neither. The fix is a content-registry with a `canonicalSlug` field that pairs sibling translations and drives hreflang automatically. Documented in [hreflang in SvelteKit + Paraglide](/articles/hreflang-sveltekit-paraglide).

Auto-translate or human translate?

Auto-translate (DeepL, GPT-4.1, Claude Sonnet) produces draft-quality copy. For SEO that's not enough. Search engines and AI engines read locale signals — idioms, register, formality. A page that reads like Spain Spanish (vale, móvil) on a Paraguay-targeted site sends the wrong relevance signal. I write or rewrite the ES copy myself in the correct register (es-PY or es-ES) rather than ship a DeepL output.

How does hreflang actually work?

Hreflang is a link relation telling search engines that two URLs are translations of the same content. They must be reciprocal (A links to B, B links to A), use ISO 639-1 language codes (and optionally ISO 3166-1 region codes — es-PY, en-GB), and include an `x-default` for single-locale or no-match cases. I generate these from the canonicalSlug registry — never hand-rolled, never drift. See [Google's hreflang documentation](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialized/international/localized-versions) for the canonical reference.

Should I use subdomains, subdirectories, or ccTLDs?

Subdirectories (/es/ on the main domain) for almost every case. They inherit the main domain's authority and are operationally simple. Subdomains (es.example.com) only when there's a legitimate operational reason. ccTLDs (example.es) only for companies that want fully separate locale brands and have the SEO budget to grow each one independently. ignax.dev runs subdirectories — that's the default I recommend.

Can you handle languages beyond EN/ES?

Yes. The technical pattern (canonicalSlug + hreflang + per-locale sitemap entries) scales to any locale. The hard part is voice: I will not ship Portuguese or German copy myself because I cannot proofread it for register. For non-EN/ES locales I integrate your translator's output and own the technical layer; you own the copy quality. EN/ES I write end-to-end.

What if my CMS is WordPress?

Works, but slower. WPML and Polylang both support hreflang, with caveats around slug normalization and orphaned translations. I have shipped multilingual SEO on WordPress before. Expect 1.5–2x the time vs a SvelteKit or Next.js stack because of plugin entropy. The technical recommendations transfer either way.

Can you white-label this for our agency?

Yes. Multilingual SEO is a frequent white-label gap — many agencies do not have a bilingual EN/ES specialist who can also debug hreflang at the code level. Day-rate $240–$560 USD/day under your brand and NDA. I deliver under your domain, stay invisible to the end client.

How do you measure multilingual SEO success?

Three signals per locale. (1) URLs indexed in GSC, segmented by language directory. (2) Ranking distribution per locale on locale-specific buyer-intent queries. (3) Hreflang error count in GSC's International Targeting report — target zero. I baseline these on day one, share the dashboard, and review monthly. No fake metrics.

Email hello@ignax.dev

Related