Build notes3 sections · 2 min readBy Dezső Mező · Published October 3, 2026.mdi18nhreflangSEOLocalization
Multilingual SEO fails in a small number of predictable ways: all locales on the same URLs fighting each other, machine-translated slugs nobody searches, hreflang tags that point one way and not back, and thin translated pages that rank for nothing in any language. This site is built to avoid all four — here is the actual structure.
01Localized slugs, not just localized text
A Hungarian searching for a contact page types 'kapcsolat', not 'contact' — so /hu/kapcsolat exists and /hu/contact redirects. Slugs live in a route map per locale, because search terms are local even when the code is shared.
02Hreflang is symmetric or it is broken
Every page declares every locale's URL including its own, plus x-default — and the declarations are generated from the same route map the router uses, so the markup cannot drift from the routing. Hand-maintained hreflang goes stale on the second site update.
03Three written versions, not one translated
Each locale's copy is authored for its audience — formal Hungarian, Sie-form German — because translated-by-feel pages read like it and rank like it. The dictionaries are the same shape so the code does not care; the text inside them does.
What to take away
- Localize the URL, not just the words — people search in their language.
- Generate hreflang from the route map or it drifts.
- x-default catches everyone else.
- Write each locale; do not translate-by-feel.
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