Bilingual SEO in Montreal: ranking in French and English without tripping over yourself

Give each language its own URL

Search engines index pages, not websites. If French and English live at the same address and swap based on a button, a cookie or a script, Google will usually see one language and ignore the other.

The fix is boring and reliable: every page exists twice, at two URLs, one language each.

• Subfolders like /fr/ and /en/ on one domain. This is our default: one site, one hosting account, one domain building authority for both languages.
• Subdomains or separate domains work, but for most small businesses they split authority and double the work.
• Parameters like ?lang=en are the weakest option. Avoid them on a new site.

The language switcher on each page should link to the equivalent page in the other language, not to the other home page. Someone reading your kitchen renovation page in French should land on the English kitchen renovation page, not start over.

hreflang, done properly

hreflang tells Google "this page has a twin in another language, and here it is." It does not boost rankings on its own. It helps Google show the French page to French searchers and the English page to English searchers, instead of picking one and hoping. The rules that trip people up:

• It goes both ways. If the French page points to the English one, the English page must point back. One-way annotations are ignored.
• Each page lists itself too.
• Full URLs, with https and the domain.
• Valid codes: fr-CA and en-CA, or simply fr and en, plus an x-default.
• The true equivalent. Not the home page, not a redirect, not a noindex page.

On WordPress, a good multilingual plugin generates these tags, as long as every page is actually linked to its translation inside the plugin.

Don't redirect visitors by IP address

It is tempting to detect where someone is, or their browser language, and send them to the "right" version automatically. Please don't.

• Googlebot mostly crawls from US IP addresses and does not always send a language preference. Redirect it to English every time and your French pages may never be crawled properly.
• In Montreal, an IP address says nothing about language. An anglophone in Rosemont, a francophone on a business trip in Calgary, a bilingual customer whose phone is set to English.

Put a clear language switcher in the header, each language named in itself ("Français", "English"), and respect the URL people clicked. For the bare domain, a fixed rule is fine: we send it to the French home page, for everyone. Same rule for every visitor and every crawler, so there is nothing to guess.

French keyword research is not translation

The most expensive mistake in bilingual SEO is translating your English keywords and calling it done. People in Quebec search in Quebec French, and the words are often different.

• A Quebec customer asks for a soumission, not a devis, which is what many translation tools and France-oriented copy will give you.
• People subscribe to an infolettre, look for stationnement, and shop on the fin de semaine.
• It works the other way as well: Montreal anglophones say dépanneur or CEGEP, which an English keyword tool built for elsewhere will never suggest.

Research the French on its own. Use keyword tools set to Canada and French, read the "People also ask" questions on French searches, see how Quebec competitors name their services, and listen to how your customers describe their needs on the phone. Then apply it everywhere, including the parts people forget:

• Slugs: /fr/renovation-cuisine/, not /fr/kitchen-renovation/.
• Title tags and meta descriptions, written for each language.
• Alt text, headings and button labels.
• The lang attribute, set to French on French pages. It sounds obvious. It is often wrong.

Writing French first also helps with Bill 96. Our Bill 96 website checklist walks through the requirements.

Local signals in both languages

• Google Business Profile. One business name, exactly as it appears on your sign, no keywords stuffed in. The description field is limited, so write it in French first and add a short English version if it fits. Post updates in both languages and reply to each review in the language it was written in.
• Website link. Point the profile to your French home page, or one dedicated landing page, and leave it there.
• Local citations. Name, address and phone identical everywhere: directories, associations, your chamber of commerce, social profiles. Small inconsistencies (a missing suite number, "St-Denis" versus "Saint-Denis") make it harder for search engines to be sure all those listings are you.
• Structured data. LocalBusiness markup on both versions, with the same name, address, phone and hours, and the description in the page's language. If you answer the phone in both languages, say so with availableLanguage.

Speed counts in both languages

A bilingual site should not be twice as slow, yet some translation setups add exactly that kind of weight.

• Use one lean multilingual plugin. Skip widgets that translate the page in the browser; search engines largely don't see that content anyway.
• Share images between languages and translate only the alt text.
• Check that your web font includes é, è, à, ç, œ, « and ». A subset without them falls back to another typeface mid-word, which looks broken and can shift the layout.
• Test French pages separately. French copy often runs longer, and a one-line English headline can wrap onto three.

Common mistakes

• Publishing machine translation as is. Fine for a first draft. Published without fluent review, it reads like a manual and borrows terms from France. Google's spam policies also specifically mention automatically translated text published without human review.
• Mixed-language pages. A French page with an English menu, English form errors or an English cookie banner. Visitors notice, and so, occasionally, does the Office québécois de la langue française. Check the consent banner too (see our Law 25 cookie consent guide).
• Canonical tags pointing across languages. The French page should be canonical to itself. Pointing it at the English version is a polite request for Google to drop the French one.
• Believing translations are duplicate content. They are not. Real duplicates happen within one language: a page reachable at two URLs, or an "English" page still full of French.

Practical tip: in Google Search Console, filter the performance report to pages containing /fr/, then /en/. Two views show quickly whether one language is pulling its weight, and which queries each one actually ranks for.

Bilingual SEO is mostly discipline: two languages, equally complete, equally fast and equally well labelled. If you are planning a new site, our article on what a website costs in Montreal explains how this fits a budget. Our local SEO is a fixed monthly fee, and a Bill 96 and Law 25 audit is a fixed price. Write to info@webdevelopmentmontreal.ca, or get a fixed-price quote.