Localize Your WordPress Website with the Usage of Plugins – Plugins to Install
There’s no doubt about the fact that the internet has made the world a very small place as it has let people from all over the world to connect and do business with each other. Though majority of the websites are published in English, as per reports from Google Analytics, it is seen that 22.7% of traffic to personal blogs came from visitors who are not familiar with English as it is not their native language. The figure is alarmingly high as it was assumed that traffic from visitors who don’t speak English could hardly be around 5%.
So, you can well understand that it is worthwhile making your site more user-friendly for visitors who don’t speak your language. WordPress website localization is the ultimate key as you have to build localized versions of your site for every region that you cover. You can achieve this by using WordPress multisite or by using localization plugins for WordPress.
#1: Transposh WordPress translation
Transposh is an indeed useful plugin which can translate the content of your website in 82 different languages automatically. This translation is handled by MS Translate, Google Translate or Apertium. It translates content, RSS feeds and hidden content like meta-descriptions, page titles, etc. This even makes your translated content indexed. Content of your website will be automatically translated to the language of the visitor. You may even display a widget which provides the visitors to select which language they can view your website.
#2: Multilingual Press
This is yet another translation plugin which was designed particularly for WordPress multisite websites and if you want to make it work on regular WordPress installations, it won’t. You’ll rather be surprised to know that the plugin comes with 174 languages and each page or post that is translated can be viewed under the post editor. You will also get a professional version of this plugin which has got few additional features. The actual plugin is however free of cost.
#3: qTranslate or mqTranslate
With more than million downloads, qTranslate is one of the most popular language plugin that you will find on WordPress. qTranslate was designed for multilingual and bilingual websites and it isn’t a transaction plugin. You can specify articles in different languages but it’s up to you to make sure that each and every translation is accurate. Once you activate it, you will find a new option in the admin area which will prompt you to change the language.
#4: Google Language Translator
Google Language Translator is a plugin for translation which lets you add one language widget to your site. You can display up to 81 flags in that widget. There will be a drop-down menu which shows each and every language that is available, irrespective of whether their flags are displayed. You can add this widget to pages and posts using a shortcode and it can be also added to theme templates using PHP function.
Therefore, if you want to localize your WordPress website, you have to add the above mentioned translation plugins to localize your site and lure more local audience.