Building a bilingual Chinese–English website that Google understands
How to build a Chinese–English website properly: a page per language, the right fonts, Google-friendly setup and who updates translations.
Quincy has one of the largest Asian communities in Massachusetts. For a lot of restaurants, grocers, clinics and trades here, half the customers would rather read in Chinese or Vietnamese. A bilingual website isn’t a nice extra. It’s how those customers find you.
But “bilingual” is easy to get wrong. A Google Translate widget in the corner doesn’t count, and Google won’t show those pages to people searching in Chinese.
One page per language
Each language should have its own real pages, like /menu and /zh/menu. Google indexes each version separately, so someone searching “昆西 餐厅” can find your Chinese page and someone searching “Quincy restaurant” finds the English one. A small setting called hreflang tells Google the pages are translations of each other.
Simplified or Traditional?
It depends on your customers. Many newer arrivals from mainland China read Simplified. Many Cantonese-speaking and Hong Kong or Taiwanese families read Traditional. Some businesses offer both. I’ll ask who your customers are before we decide.
Details that matter
- Fonts that support Chinese properly, so characters don’t fall back to an ugly default or load slowly on phones.
- A language switch that remembers the visitor’s choice.
- Translated page titles and descriptions, not just the page body, so search results show up in the right language.
- Google Business Profile in both languages where possible.
- Real translation, reviewed by a fluent speaker. Machine translation is a fine first draft for a menu, but dish names and policies deserve a human check.
Who updates the translations?
This is where most bilingual sites fall apart: the English side gets updated and the Chinese side doesn’t. I set things up so every change shows both languages side by side, and an AI draft of the translation is ready for you or your staff to approve. Updates take minutes, not a call to the web person.
What it costs
Bilingual support is included in the Restaurant & retail site (from $4,800) and can be added to the Starter site. See the price menu or read more about websites.