Published on · By the IT LABS PRO team
Morocco is a multilingual country, and its businesses often address very different audiences: French- or Arabic-speaking Moroccan customers, tourists, international partners. A multilingual website reaches all of them, provided it is well designed. Done badly, it becomes hard to manage and can even hurt your search rankings. Here is what works.
Which languages?
Start from your customers, not your wishes: in which languages do customers contact you? Which languages do your website’s visitors speak (your analytics will tell you)? For most Moroccan businesses, French is the base; Arabic widens the audience to the local and regional market; English is a must for international customers, tourism and export. Two well-translated, up-to-date languages are better than four half-translated ones.
Arabic: a right-to-left layout
Arabic is written from right to left. The Arabic version of a website is therefore not just a translation of the text: the whole layout has to be mirrored (menu, alignment, directional icons, forms). Technically, the page’s code declares the language and the reading direction (the lang="ar" and dir="rtl" attributes), and the stylesheets must handle the mirroring. You also need a font that displays Arabic characters properly. This work has to be planned from the design stage: adding it afterwards costs much more.
Page addresses (URLs)
Each language needs its own addresses, so that Google can index each version. Three structures are common:
- subfolders: yoursite.ma/fr/, yoursite.ma/ar/, yoursite.ma/en/ (the easiest to manage);
- subdomains: fr.yoursite.ma, en.yoursite.ma;
- separate domains: mostly useful to target different countries.
Avoid a single address whose content changes with the browser language or a cookie: Google would only ever see one version.
hreflang tags
hreflang tags tell Google that several pages are language versions of the same content, so that it shows the right version to each person. The essential rules:
- each version must list all the other versions and itself;
- the links must be reciprocal: if the French page lists the English page, the English page must list the French page;
- you can add an “x-default” version for visitors whose language is not covered;
- only link pages that are truly equivalent (not a translated page to a generic home page).
Translate or adapt?
Word-for-word translation rarely works, for readers or for search engines. People do not search with the same words from one language to another: you need keyword research for each language, and to adapt examples, cultural references, units and formats (dates, phone numbers). Have the important pages proofread by a native speaker. Machine translation can be a starting point, never the final version.
The language switcher
- Put it somewhere visible, at the top of every page.
- Show each language’s name in that language (“Français”, “العربية”, “English”) rather than flags, which stand for countries, not languages.
- Link to the equivalent page in the other language, not to the home page.
- Do not redirect visitors automatically based on their browser without letting them choose.
Managing content over time
The real cost of a multilingual website is keeping it up to date: every new page, every news item, every price change has to be carried into every language. Plan an admin area that makes this easier (pages linked across languages, alerts when a translation is missing) and a clear organisation: who translates, who proofreads, and how quickly.
How much does a multilingual website cost?
At IT LABS PRO, a multi-page or multilingual business website is usually 14,000 to 18,000 MAD, with a lead time of 4 to 6 weeks. The budget depends on the number of languages and pages, whether a right-to-left Arabic version is added, and how much content needs translating (you can supply the translation yourself or use a translator). See our guide to website costs in Morocco in 2026.
Common mistakes
- Partly translated pages that mix languages.
- hreflang tags that are not reciprocal or point to pages that do not exist.
- Titles and descriptions left untranslated (see our guide to the title tag and meta description).
- An Arabic version that keeps a left-to-right layout.
- Forms and error messages left in the main language.
SEO for each version
Each language version must be optimised for its own searches: titles and descriptions written in that language, adapted text, images with translated alternative text, and internal links that stay in the same language. Track each version’s performance separately in Google Search Console: one version can do very well while another stays invisible.
Frequently asked questions
Does a multilingual website rank better?
It can appear in more searches, in each language, provided each version is good quality, has its own addresses and is linked to the others with correct hreflang tags.
Can I add a language later?
Yes, if the website’s structure allows for it. Adding Arabic does require specific layout work, though: better to plan it from the design stage.
Does WordPress handle multiple languages?
Yes, with dedicated plugins or multisite set-ups. A custom website can also handle languages natively. See our comparison of WordPress and custom websites.
In short
A good multilingual website chooses its languages according to its customers, gives each language its own addresses, links the versions with reciprocal hreflang tags, adapts the content rather than translating it word for word, and provides a real right-to-left layout for Arabic. Discover our multilingual website development in Morocco.
Sources
- Google Search Central, “Tell Google about localized versions of your page” (hreflang): developers.google.com
- Google Search Central, “Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites”: developers.google.com
- W3C, “Structural markup and right-to-left text in HTML”: w3.org