Would You Like to Translate Your Website? Consider Weglot for WordPress

In this in-depth Weglot review, we’ll explore its features, pros, and cons to help you decide if it’s worth integrating into your WordPress website.

We’ve been using Weglot for WordPress for over three years, and it’s been nothing short for our SEO rankings: Weglot helped us to get the first position in the SERPs on several keywords (in French and German) with just a few clicks.

This is a real review based on our experience of this excellent plugin for WordPress.

Let’s dive in!

Why is Weglot Important for Website Translation?

Weglot isn’t just another name in the business. Founded in France in 2016, it has grown tremendously, supporting multiple Content Management Systems (CMS) such as WordPress, Shopify, and more.

For the records, our current CTO, Thomas Deneulin, coded the first version of their WordPress plugin back then.

Weglot raised $50 million to turn any website into a multilingual site!

Weglot has just closed a $50 million Series A funding round (€45 million) and is on its way to building the best WordPress translation tool in the world.

The Multilingual Advantage with Weglot

Once you install Weglot, your site will display a language switcher, usually as a flag icon. Users simply click on it to translate the website into their preferred language. This improves user experience, significantly boosting international traffic and search engine rankings.

An In-depth Look at Weglot’s Features

From automatic translation to manual professional translation and multilingual SEO optimization, Weglot has got it all. Let’s examine a the features that make Weglot amazing!

Easy, Lightweight, and High-Performance Translation

Setting up Weglot in WordPress is a breeze. Just install the plugin, input your API key, select your original and target languages, and you’re good to go.

Unlike other translation plugins, Weglot doesn’t require additional language packs, streamlining your website’s performance.

After installing and activating the plugin you are almost done. The only step necessary to enable automatic translation is to copy your Weglot API key and select the original and target languages.

Your website will immediately display a menu where users can choose the language they wish to use.

In contrast to other popular translation plugins, this plugin does not require you to install additional language packs.

You can also be confident that your translated content will automatically be indexed by Google following the best practices in multilingual SEO. This bring us to our second point: is Weglot SEO friendly?

Is Weglot SEO-Friendly?

Absolutely, Weglot is optimized for SEO. Our website has seen significant improvements in SERPs in multiple languages

Just look at this screenshot.

Weglot positive impact in google rankings

As you can see, some of our top keywords are in English, in French and in German and this only because of Weglot.

If your native content is already optimized for SEO, then Weglot will just skyrocket your page in the SERPs top results in other languages.

This is possible because Weglot has been built for SEO. Here are the four main SEO assets of Weglot:

A unique URL is created for each version of your web page. The plugin automatically creates “/[2-letter code]” sub-directory for each translated version of your pages.
hreflang tags are automatically added to your source code by Weglot. In this way, Google knows you have different versions of the same page, and will index these pages more often. Hreflang tags can be found in the <head> tag of your website source code.
The Weglot translation process takes place server-side, meaning your content is translated into your source code (and not just dynamically with a JavaScript solution, which is bad for SEO)
Weglot automatically detects and translates SEO tags, like meta description tags.

Weglot is compatible with SEOPress and Yoast.

Powerful Visual Editor for Manual Translations

If you want to translate your content quickly and easily without having to hire a translator, automated translation is the perfect choice for you. Weglot supports instant translation, as well as visual editing to make editing translations super easy. This is a total no-brainer.

Indeed, your translated content can be edited right from the front end of your website through its visual editor. It only takes a click on the Visual Editor tab to start editing.

Weglot do 98% of the job, then you just have to get through your website with Weglot’s visual editor to fix the wrong translations.

Translation Statistics

The statistics page depicts the translated page views by any time period, and presents a line chart illustrating how viewing habits have changed over the past few weeks, months, etc. In addition, the top five translated pages are displayed.

Weglot’s translated page views are key to understanding how Weglot helps your business and what languages visitors are reading your website in.

An Outstanding Support

When I write a plugin review, I always check support reviews. This is not a surprise at all, but Weglot has amazing reviews on both Trustpilot and WordPress plugins directory.

Weglot reviews on TrustPilot

What really amazed me is how people are saying that the support is perfect/excellent/awesome.

Translating a WordPress website is something serious, and it’s important to know that you will enjoy a good support if you encounter an issue with it.

Weglot reviews on WordPress

Pros and Cons of Using Weglot

Pros about Weglot

User-friendly
SEO optimization
Fast performance
Excellent support

Cons about weglot

Weglot is not cheap, but you pay for what you get
Once you use Weglot, it’s really hard to opt for another translation tool: you will no longer be able to see the translation on your website after cancelling your subscription.

Weglot vs WPML: The Ultimate Showdown

People often ask what is the difference between Weglot and WPML. Here is a breakdown:

Ease of Use

First things first, let’s talk about user-friendliness. Weglot is renowned for its simplicity. Installation and initial setup can be done within minutes. It’s like a “plug-and-play” solution for website translation. You insert your API key, choose your original and target languages, and voila! Your website is ready to greet a global audience.

On the other hand, WPML offers a robust set of features but has a steeper learning curve. It might take some time to get used to its dashboard and options. So, if you’re someone who likes to get into the details and have more granular control, WPML is your go-to. But if you’re looking for an almost immediate setup, Weglot has the upper hand.

Translation Quality

Both Weglot and WPML offer automated translations, and they both support manual corrections. However, Weglot’s visual editor makes real-time changes a breeze, especially for those without a technical background. This is a lifesaver for businesses that want high-quality translations but don’t have the in-house capabilities to execute them.

WPML doesn’t offer a visual editor in the same sense. You can still manually correct translations, but it’s often a more cumbersome process.

SEO Capabilities

Now, here’s where things get interesting. We already know that Weglot is SEO-friendly. It does an excellent job in creating unique URLs for each language version and automatically adds hreflang tags. This is great for multilingual SEO optimization. It also translates SEO tags like meta descriptions, making it a comprehensive SEO solution.

WPML also offers strong SEO capabilities, but it can require additional configuration and is generally more hands-on. This might be a plus if you’re an SEO aficionado and enjoy tinkering, but for those who want a more streamlined experience, Weglot takes the cake.

Performance and Compatibility

One of the major concerns with any WordPress plugin is how it impacts website performance. Weglot is lightweight and highly performant, meaning it won’t slow down your site. WPML, while incredibly feature-rich, can be more resource-intensive, so you might need to optimize your site for speed when using it.

Both plugins are compatible with popular SEO plugins like Yoast and SEOPress, as well as various WordPress themes.

Pricing

Weglot comes with a price tag, but you’re essentially paying for convenience and quick setup. WPML is also a premium plugin but offers different pricing structures, allowing for a bit more flexibility depending on your needs.

Translation with Weglot: Our Verdict

Weglot is an incredible translation solution that translates content from WordPress sites into many languages. The entire process can be accomplished within a few minutes without the need for any coding. There is no doubt that Weglot delivers what it promises, in over 100 languages.

In my opinion, there is no other translation solution as simple as Weglot for WordPress. If you have a reasonable budget and need the most intuitive translation plugin available, this is the plugin that you need.

However, there are other translation plugins on the market that are a bit cheaper. Alternatives to Weglot may be considered if you have a limited budget (Polylang or WPML)

I hope this article helped you to make your opinion about Weglot. You may also want to see our full review of WP Rocket aka the most powerful caching plugin for WordPress.