Competing in the country the buyer lives in
A Belgian buyer does not look for the same thing, with the same words, at the same time of year as a Spanish one. Internationalising a development is not translating the website: it is building five different doors into the same product.
Translating is not internationalising
The English version of almost every development website in this region is the Spanish version run through a translator. It reads, it is understood, and it does not rank, for two reasons: it does not contain the words the buyer actually types, and it does not answer the questions somebody buying abroad asks.
A foreign buyer does not ask about built square metres. They ask about annual running costs, about the community charge, about what happens after completion, about a mortgage as a non resident, and about how long the airport really takes. None of that is in the Spanish copy, so none of it is in the translation either.
There is a second layer that translation cannot reach: the season. A Dutch buyer starts looking in January for a trip in May. A Spanish buyer moves all year round. Two markets, two calendars, and one campaign schedule cannot serve both.
What a German buyer sees in each case
The same person, the same development and the same search, with two different websites behind it. The difference is not translation quality: it is whether Google has anything German to show.
- Searches in German from Munich
- Google finds no German page
- The Spanish home page comes up
- Leaves before switching language
The language exists on the site, but it has no address of its own. What has no address cannot rank and cannot be linked to.
- Searches in German from Munich
- Google shows the /de/ version
- Reads, downloads the sheet and writes
Each language has its own address, its own self referencing canonical and reciprocal hreflang. Google knows which version to show to whom.
How a multilingual site is built so the versions do not fight
- 01
One address per language
Each version lives at its own stable, readable URL. No switching language with a parameter or a cookie: what has no address of its own cannot be ranked or linked.
- 02
A canonical pointing at itself
Each version is the original of its own language, not a copy of the Spanish one. A canonical wrongly pointed at Spanish deletes the other four from the index, and it is the most expensive and most common failure.
- 03
Reciprocal, complete hreflang
The five versions declare each other, plus x-default. If one of them fails to return the reference, Google discards the whole group and the versions compete against each other.
- 04
Copy written per market
It starts from a base text and is rewritten per country, with its own questions and its own vocabulary. It is not machine translation published as is, because in this product it shows and it costs credibility.
- 05
Separate keyword research per language
The words a buyer uses in their own language are not the translation of the Spanish ones. They are researched separately, market by market, before anything is written.
Two audiences that never get mixed
This site, the HolaDomus one, speaks to developers: marketing a scheme, sales channel, buyer acquisition. The website of a development speaks to buyers: new build, villa, apartment, Neubau, programme neuf, obra nueva.
Those are two different positioning strategies, with two vocabularies and two search intents that have nothing in common. Mixing them on one site is the fastest way to rank for neither, and it is a mistake you can see all over the developer websites of this coast.
What the infrastructure is made of
Each piece can be read on its own, but they only work together: a website without languages reaches nobody abroad, and acquisition without measurement cannot be corrected.
Marketing for developers
What a developer needs that a generalist agency rarely understands: the cycle of a scheme, the off plan phase and the sales team.
The development website
The central asset. Why the development website is not the developer corporate site, and what goes inside it.
International buyer acquisition
How enquiries come in, how each one is tied to its source and how you learn which channel paid for the keys.
Social media and community
Content, publishing and community management for the development: who answers the messages, in which tone and how fast.
The international buyer
Who buys, from where, in which language and at what point in the year they start looking.
Digital marketing of new build
The page that explains the whole thing: the borrowed channel problem and how an owned one is built.
About languages
Is English enough?
For British, Irish and Scandinavian buyers, almost always. For German, Dutch and French buyers, no: those markets read and compare in their own language and spot machine translation immediately.
Do five languages dilute the ranking?
Not if they are declared properly. hreflang tells Google they are the same page in five languages and not five pages competing. Done badly, yes, it does damage, and it is a very frequent error.
Which languages should be opened first?
It depends on the municipality and the product, not on a general list. In the Vega Baja English and Dutch usually come first; on the Murcia coast the weight of the Spanish buyer changes the order. It is decided with the inventory in front of us.
Do we need one domain per country?
No. A single domain with language folders is cheaper, easier to maintain and concentrates authority. Country domains only pay off in very large operations with a local team in each market.
Let us look at how they find you from abroad
We search for your development from the five markets and show you what comes up, with screenshots. It tends to be the shortest and most useful conversation of all.