We’re an english-language store and we rank for some relatively competitive english queries.
We are hoping to leverage our existing domain authority to target new languages/regions with country specific sub-folders (e.g. Spain/Spanish >> /es/ sub-folder)
Does anyone have experience with this and how has it gone? We’re a little anxious not to disrupt our english rankings and also of the administrative overhead of managing an already relatively large website in multiple languages.
Any feedback or insight would be greatly appreciated!
The good news: subfolders inherit domain authority, that part isn’t a worry. The risks I’ve watched stores hit:
Translation quality - if you launch /es/ with raw machine output across the whole catalog, Google treats it as thin content and the english pages can get pulled into the same quality cluster. Lower english rankings, not the new market doing well.
Hreflang setup - Translate & Adapt handles this cleanly once configured. Langify works but the hreflang implementation has historically been finicky and you need to validate with a tool like Sitebulb or Screaming Frog post-launch.
One market at a time also helps. Pick the one with the strongest commercial signal, ship clean translations for top 100 pages first instead of the whole site, then expand.
What’s the target market - Spain specifically, or LATAM? That changes whether you’d want es vs es-ES.
Yes, using country/language subfolders is usually the cleaner approach if you already have a strong domain and want to expand into new markets without splitting authority across separate domains.
In general, this can work well as long as:
your existing English URLs stay unchanged
the new language lives in its own subfolder, for example /es/
hreflang is set up correctly between versions
translations are complete, not just machine-swapped page text
internal links, metadata, and structured data are localized too
That said, the main risk is usually not the English rankings themselves, but implementation mistakes. If the current English structure is left intact, you should not see disruption just from adding new subfolders.
The administrative overhead is real, though. Once you add multiple languages, you are effectively maintaining multiple versions of the same site, so it is worth planning the workflow first. Shopify Markets can help with the regional side, but content management still needs to be very organized.
If you are already ranking well in English, I would usually expand gradually, start with one market, and make sure the technical setup is solid before rolling out more languages.
I agree. Subfolders are usually the best option when you want to expand internationally while keeping your domain authority consolidated. Just make sure hreflang, translations, and localization are implemented correctly, and roll out new markets gradually to minimize risks. Paylocity login
Using country/language subfolders (such as /es/) is generally a solid approach and shouldn’t negatively impact your English rankings if implemented correctly.
It is totally normal to be nervous about touching a site that already ranks well. The good news is that using subfolders like /es/ is actually the absolute best way to expand.
Because you are keeping everything on the same domain, your hard earned English authority will naturally flow to your new Spanish pages. This helps them rank much faster than starting a brand new website. Your English rankings will stay perfectly safe as long as your site uses correct hreflang tags. These tags simply tell Google to show the English version to English speakers, and the Spanish version to people in Spain. Luckily, Shopify Markets sets these tags up automatically for you.
The administrative workload is definitely the hardest part. To manage a large catalog, you should rely on a good translation app like Shopify Translate and Adapt or Weglot to do the heavy lifting in bulk.
Yes, you can ship the top pages first. You do not need to translate the whole site before launching a new language folder.
I’d start with the pages that already get impressions/revenue: homepage, main collections, top products, key blog/guide pages, shipping/returns, and any trust pages people need before buying. Keep the untranslated pages out of the new language navigation/sitemap for now, and make sure hreflang only points to pages that actually have a real translated equivalent.
The trap is launching half-translated templates or machine-translated thin pages at scale. A smaller clean rollout usually beats a huge messy one.
Thank you Ros but I don’t see how I do this. In the ‘Languages’ settings, I can only see the option to publish a whole language which I assume will mean publishing the whole website? Any further help greatly appreciated.
