How to Add Google Translate in WordPress: An Expert‘s Comprehensive Step-by-Step Guide

Enabling multi-language translation is crucial for reaching international audiences. This drives additional traffic, leads, and revenue. According to 2022 surveys by Google, over 70% of global internet users prefer browsing sites in their native tongue.

Integrating Google Translate into your WordPress site helps break down language barriers by automatically converting content into the visitor‘s preferred language with one click.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover:

• Choosing the best translation plugins for WordPress sites
• Configuring plugin settings for optimal translation performance
• Step-by-step implementation instructions
• Comparing paid vs free translation plugins
• Additional translation features to consider

I’ll draw on my years of experience managing WordPress sites professionally to ensure you have the expertise needed to successfully add Google Translate. Let’s get started!

Why Add Google Translate to WordPress

Before jumping into the technical details, let‘s discuss why translation capabilities are so important:

Increased International Traffic and Conversions

Enabling Google Translate increases findability across search engines in every region worldwide. This exposes your content to more potential visitors globally.

According to 2022 surveys by Statista, over 50% of website visitors will leave a site if the content is not in their preferred language. By automatically translating pages via Google Translate, you significantly expand your reach and appeal.

Improved Localization for International SEO

Localizing content for international audiences signals search engines that your site supports users across regions. Pages translated into multiple languages have more opportunities to rank, improving international visibility.

Moz data indicates that sites with excellent localization and translation functionality tend to outperform competitors by over 30% in non-English-speaking markets.

Enhanced User Experience Across Languages

Visitors appreciate when sites eliminate language barriers up front through easily accessible translation. This increases user engagement as readers can instantly comprehend content in their native tongue.

Studies by TranslateMedia discovered over 65% of shoppers more likely to make purchases from sites translated into their language. Removing language roadblocks boosts conversions.

Having explored the benefits, let‘s dive into implementation…

Choosing the Best Google Translate Plugin for WordPress

There are both free and paid WordPress plugins that connect to the Google Translate API to enable multi-language translations:

TranslatePress is the premium option trusted by WordPress professionals. For highly trafficked sites, the advanced functionality and optimization for multilingual SEO makes it well worth the $129+ investment.

However, Weglot provides over 100 language translations entirely for free up to 2000 words per month. This is suitable for many small to medium sites just getting started with translation capabilities.

In this guide, we‘ll demonstrate setup using the Weglot plugin. But we‘ll also compare capabilities to help determine if upgrading to paid TranslatePress is right for driving more international conversions long-term.

Let‘s begin…

Step 1 – Installing & Activating Weglot Translate

Installing Weglot to integrate Google Translate into WordPress is simple:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins > Add New
2. Search "Weglot".
3. Select the Weglot – Translate your WordPress website plugin.
4. Click Install Now.
5. Once installation completes, click Activate.

This installing and activates the Weglot plugin with just a few clicks. Pretty easy so far!

Weglot will automatically display supported languages for translation at the top of every WordPress page, allowing visitors to toggle translation on/off instantly.

But first we need to customize a translations settings…

Step 2 – Configuring Weglot Translation Settings

Weglot comes translation-ready out of the box. But optimizing a few key settings can dramatically improve translation functionality.

From your WP dashboard:

1. Go to Weglot > Settings
2. Under Languages, enable all the translations you want to support. 110+ languages available!
3. Under Appearance, choose between different Flag styles to match your theme visual design.
4. Check the Auto-redirect box so visitors from a given geo-location get sent automatically to translated versions of pages in their native tongue.
5. Enable URL Modification to optimize translated pages for international SEO by creating site-language.com formatted URLs.

Once your translation options are set, be sure to click Save Configuration at the bottom.

Now your site is primed for translations!

Pro Tip: For sites focused heavily on localization and conversions, TranslatePress has even more robust multilingual SEO controls like enforcing language-specific URLs across domains (fr.website.com).

Step 3 – Manually Testing Google Translate

With Weglot enabled, put translations to the test:

1. Pull up any page or post on your WordPress site front-end in your browser.
2. In the top navigation bar, language flag icons now appear. Click any language to instantly convert all text!

You can also manually alter the URLs your pages to automatically view Google Translated versions.

For example, try inserting /de/ or /es/ between your domain and URL path, like:

yoursite.com/**de**/contact

This will display the German or Spanish translated edition.

The Weglot Google Translate integration works fantastically on the front-end without needing any coding knowledge!

Improving Accuracy with TranslatePress

While Weglot offers quick one-click translations, occasionally the accuracy is imperfect. This frustration increases for languages farther different than English like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, etc.

The paid TranslatePress plugin has customization features that allow you to manually override any errors for a given language right within WordPress.

So if your site depends heavily on precision to drive international conversions, the extra $129+ investment is well worth it.

TranslatePress also has deeper integration with professional human translation services to verify accuracy across all pages.

Wrapping Up

I hope this guide provided a comprehensive, step-by-step resource for succeeding with Google Translate integration in WordPress. Going multilingual opens enormous traffic and conversions potential.

If you run into any snags or have additional questions, don‘t hesitate to reach out! I have helped dozens of clients optimize translation functionality.

Just shoot me an email at [email protected] and I‘m happy to help troubleshoot or provide free guidance.