The mistake of translating your site into German instead of writing it
German-speaking markets carry some of the highest average spend in Europe and the least well-executed competition. Almost everybody wastes that in exactly the same way.
Translating isn't keyword research
A translation, however good, turns your English sentence into its German equivalent. But the word a German types into Google isn't the translation of the word an English speaker types. It's the word they use. "Country house" translates as "Landhaus", but someone searching from Germany types "Finca mit Pool". Those are two different pages with two different destinations, and the translated one appears in no real search at all.
The reader notices, and it costs money
Machine-translated German has a recognisable rhythm: sentences that run too long, structures copied from the source language, false friends and a generic tone. A native reader spots it in the first sentence. On a fifty-euro booking that doesn't matter. On a four-thousand-euro villa week or an eight-hundred-thousand-euro purchase, that first impression decides whether they keep reading or close the tab.
Google notices too
Not because translation is penalised as such, but because the resulting text doesn't precisely answer any query. If you aren't using the words people search with, you don't match the search intent, and without that there's no ranking, however clean the code underneath.
What to do instead
Your own keyword research for the German market, copy written by a native, and a page structure adapted to what that market expects to find, which is usually more detail, more written terms and more hard data than a Spanish or British reader needs. Then correct hreflang tags, so Google understands these are three versions of one thing rather than three pages competing with each other.
Common questions
Is it worth it if I only get the occasional German customer?
It depends on your market. If German speakers live in or visit your area, you probably get few precisely because they can't find you. If your audience is overwhelmingly British, the priority is different.
What about modern machine translation, which is far better?
It's excellent for understanding a text and fine for an internal email. For a page that has to rank and sell, it still doesn't solve the underlying problem: it translates your words rather than researching theirs.
Keep reading
- Search engine optimisationRanking first on Google isn't luck and it isn't a bigger budget. It's architecture, content and patience, applied in the language each customer is actually searching in.
- International and multilingual SEOThree language versions of a site either reinforce each other or quietly cannibalise each other. There is no third outcome, and the difference is a few lines of markup plus a lot of research.
- Holiday rentals and villasA villa ranking well in German fills a season on two or three long bookings. The problem is that almost nobody in this sector works that language seriously.
- Estate agents and developersThe buyer of a million-euro second home starts on Google from another country entirely, eighteen months before they sign anything.