Fazley RabbiYour website is in Bangla and English, but something odd is happening: someone searches in Bangla and Google shows them your English page, or one version of a page never appears at all, or both versions sit weakly in the results. It feels as if your own pages are competing with each other.
Usually they are not competing at all. Google has simply not been told clearly which page is for which language, so it guesses. The fix is to give each language version clear, consistent signals.
Why Google mixes up your language versions
Google works out the language of a page mainly from its visible text. Problems start when:
- Both languages share one URL and switch with a button, cookie or browser setting, so Google only ever sees one version.
- The "Bangla" page is half English: English menus, English titles, an untranslated product description.
- The Bangla page's canonical tag points to the English page, which tells Google the Bangla page is just a copy.
- The site redirects visitors automatically based on location or browser language, so Google's crawler may never reach the other version.
- There are no hreflang tags, or they are broken.
Properly translated pages are not treated as duplicate content. Pages whose main content was never translated can be.
The set-up that works
- One language per URL. Give each version its own address. A simple pattern is Bangla at the root (example.com/services/) and English in a folder (example.com/en/services/), or the other way round. Keep the structure parallel so every page has an obvious partner.
- Translate the whole page. Title tag, meta description, headings, menus, buttons and image alt text should all be in the page's language. Write the Bangla for Bangla readers rather than pasting machine translation, because people search with their own words; Bangla keyword research covers how.
- Add hreflang tags. In the head of each page, list every language version, including the page itself: one line for "bn", one for "en", and an "x-default" line for the version to show when neither fits. Both pages in a pair must point to each other. If the Bangla page lists the English one but the English page does not list the Bangla one, Google may ignore the tags.
- Self-referencing canonicals. The Bangla page's canonical points to the Bangla page, the English one to the English page. Never point one language at the other.
- A visible language switcher. It should link to the same page in the other language, not to the homepage. Let visitors choose; do not force redirects.
- Both versions in your sitemap. Large sites can put hreflang in the XML sitemap instead of the page head; pick one method and use it consistently.
Mistakes I see often
- Using "bd" as a language code. BD is Bangladesh's country code; the language code for Bangla is "bn". If you add a region, it comes after the language, as in "bn-BD" or "en-BD".
- hreflang tags that all point to the homepage instead of the matching page.
- Alternates listed for pages that do not exist yet or return an error.
- A plugin that adds hreflang to pages whose translation was never published.
Checking your work
View a page's source and find the hreflang and canonical lines. Then use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console to see which canonical Google has chosen. If it picked the other language, something is still pointing the wrong way. In the Performance report, filter by page to see which searches each version appears for. Changes take time to show, because Google has to recrawl both versions.
What you can do yourself, and where help is useful
Your team can translate content, fix menus and test the switcher. Most WordPress multilingual plugins can add hreflang for you, but the output still needs checking. On custom-built sites, large catalogues or sites that have already lost visibility, hreflang lives in templates and sitemaps, and one mistake repeats across every page. That is where an SEO specialist saves time, and it is part of the technical SEO work I do.
Where to start today
Pick your most important page and its translation. Check three things: each has its own URL, each canonical points to itself, and each lists the other in hreflang. Fix that one pair properly, then copy the pattern across the site. For a second pair of eyes, get in touch.