Be visible in French, German and English

Why it matters

Luxembourg works in several languages. A 2018 study cited by the government found that 98% of residents speak French, 80% English and 78% German, and Luxembourgish is used by 77% (luxembourg.lu). Your customers and visitors will ask ChatGPT in whichever of these they think in.

Assistants usually answer in the language of the question. When they look things up, they draw on search engines: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, for example, may run several related searches to build one answer. If your offer is only described in English, a search in French or German has no page of yours in that language to find.

Assistants do not publish exactly which pages they read for a question in a given language. What you can control is whether a clear page exists in each language, and whether search engines know which pages are translations of each other.

LanguagesGot your Starter audit? This guide fixes the gaps in "Score per language" and the "Why languages differ" box on page 03. In a free Snapshot, compare the English and French columns on page 03.

Reference

Three words to know

Before you start

Have these ready

• Your Guide 01 scorecard, run in each language you plan to cover. It shows where you are absent today.
• A login to your website editor (WordPress, Webflow, Wix) or your developer's contact.
• A native speaker for each language who knows your trade: a colleague, a customer you trust, or a professional translator.
• Read first: Guide 06: Write pages ChatGPT can quote. Fix a page in one language before you translate it into two more.

Steps

Add your languages, one step at a time

1. Decide your languages from your enquiries

   Go through your last 50 enquiries: emails, booking requests, contact form messages, notes from phone calls. Write down the language of each one. The languages that make up most of the list are the ones to cover.

   Then look at your scorecard. A language where customers often write to you, but where ChatGPT never names you, comes first. A hotel near the old town that welcomes French, German and English guests would plan for all three. If many customers write to you in Luxembourgish, treat it as a fourth language in the same way.

2. Choose what to translate first

   You do not need the whole site on day one. Start with the pages that answer the questions customers ask:

   Page	Why first
   Homepage	States who you are, what you offer and where.
   Your top 3 offer pages	The menu, rooms or services that bring most of your enquiries.
   Practical information	Address, opening hours, prices, team, year founded.
   Contact or booking	Phone, email, address and the languages you speak.
   FAQ	Short answers in the words customers use.

   Translate each page in full. Google warns that translating only the menu and footer, while the main text stays in one language, makes a poor result for searchers.

3. Give each language its own web address

   Google recommends a separate address for each language version. It advises against showing a different language on the same address based on cookies or browser settings. Your options:

   Option	Looks like	What Google says
   Folders	yourcompany.lu/fr/ yourcompany.lu/de/	Easy to set up, low maintenance, same site.
   Subdomains	fr.yourcompany.lu	Easy to set up. Visitors may not tell whether "de" means a language or a country.
   Separate domains	yourcompany.de	Can only target a single country, and can be expensive.
   Parameters	yourcompany.lu?lang=fr	Not recommended.

   Our recommendation

   Use folders. Everything stays on your .lu domain, and Wix, Webflow, WPML and Polylang all offer this format. That is what we do on letzscale.com: English at letzscale.com, French at letzscale.com/fr, German at letzscale.com/de.

4. Translate for meaning, with a native reviewer

   Automatic translation is fine as a first draft. Before anything goes live, a native speaker reads every page and fixes what sounds foreign or wrong.

   • Use your customers' words. Take them from your enquiries and from the questions in your scorecard. A German-speaking guest may search for "Hotel nahe der Altstadt", not a word-for-word translation of your English heading. Your reviewer decides which words belong in the headings.
   • Keep the facts identical. The same phone number, prices and opening hours on every version. A wrong number in one language is a wrong fact AI can repeat.
   • One language per page. Google advises against side-by-side translations and asks for the same language in the text and the menu of each page.

5. Connect the versions with hreflang and a language switcher

   Each version tells Google where the others are. The rule is simple: every version lists itself and all the others, using the full address starting with https://. If page A points to page B but B does not point back, Google ignores the lines.

   There are two common places to put these lines. Most websites put them in the hidden head section of each page:

   hreflang in the head of all three pagesCopy

   <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://www.yourcompany.lu/fr/" />
   <link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://www.yourcompany.lu/de/" />
   <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://www.yourcompany.lu/en/" />
   <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.yourcompany.lu/" />

   The other way is your sitemap, the list of your pages for search engines. That is how letzscale.com does it: each page in our sitemap lists its English, French and German versions, plus x-default.

   letzscale.com/sitemap.xml · one entry, October 2026

   <url>
     <loc>https://letzscale.com/pricing</loc>
     <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://letzscale.com/pricing" />
     <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://letzscale.com/fr/pricing" />
     <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://letzscale.com/de/pricing" />
     <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://letzscale.com/pricing" />
   </url>

   • Use the two-letter language code. A region is optional, for example fr-LU for French in Luxembourg; a region on its own is not valid.
   • x-default points to the page for everyone else: a language choice page, or the version you want them to see.
   • Pick one place, head or sitemap. You do not need both.

   Most website builders write these lines for you once you add languages:

   Wix

   Wix Multilingual adds hreflang and x-default to multilingual pages by default. Wix help

   Webflow

   Webflow Localization adds hreflang for all pages in the sitemap it generates. With a custom sitemap, you add them yourself. Webflow help

   WordPress

   Plugins such as WPML and Polylang create hreflang automatically. Polylang adds x-default only on the homepage, and only with some URL settings. For other pages you need a code snippet. WPML · Polylang

   Then add a visible language switcher on every page. Google suggests plain links to the other language versions. Each link should lead to the same page in the other language, not back to the homepage. Write each language in its own language: Français, Deutsch, English. On letzscale.com, the switcher on the pricing page leads to /fr/pricing and /de/pricing.

6. Translate titles, descriptions and structured data too

   Every page has a title and a short description that visitors do not see on the page itself, but that search results often show. Google asks for the title in the same language as the page, and may replace a title that does not match.

   Version	Page title
   French	Hôtel près de la vieille ville de Luxembourg, avec parking
   German	Hotel nahe der Altstadt von Luxemburg, mit Parkplatz
   English	Hotel near Luxembourg's old town, with parking

   Descriptions: write one per page and per language. Google says identical descriptions on every page are not helpful.

   Structured data (see Guide 05): if you use it, it must match the visible page. On the German page, the description and service names in it are in German.

7. Do not redirect visitors automatically

   Some sites send each visitor to a language based on their location or browser setting. Google advises against it: people and search engines may never see your other versions. Googlebot, Google's crawler, usually visits from the USA and does not say which language it prefers, so it may only ever see one version.

   Let visitors choose with the switcher from step 5. Check these settings:

   • Webflow: on Advanced and Enterprise Localization plans, visitors can be routed by browser language. Webflow help
   • Polylang: Languages → Settings has a "Detect browser language" option that redirects first-time visitors on the homepage. Our advice is to turn it off. Polylang help
   • Custom site: ask your developer whether anything switches language by location, browser language or cookie.

8. Run the Guide 01 check again in each language

   Once the pages are live, run your Guide 01 questions again, in each language, with the same assistants. Note the date your new versions went live in the scorecard.

   Search engines need time to find new pages, and nobody can guarantee rankings or recommendations. Compare totals per language each month, not single answers.

Check it worked

Confirm search engines can see each language

Open one of your new pages, right-click and choose View page source. Search the code for hreflang. You should find one line per language plus x-default, each with a full https:// address. Do the same on the other two versions: the lines must be identical. If you use the sitemap instead, open yourcompany.lu/sitemap.xml and check one entry the same way.

Common mistakes

What usually goes wrong

• Translating the menu and leaving the text. A German menu over French text is still a French page to Google.
• One-way hreflang. The French page names the German one, but the German page does not name the French one back. Google ignores both.
• A switcher that leads to the homepage. A guest reading your German booking page who clicks "Français" should land on the French booking page.
• Different facts in different languages. The English page shows the new phone number, the French page the old one. AI may repeat either.
• Redirecting by location. Visitors from Trier, Metz or Arlon get pushed into one language, and Google's crawler may never see the others.