Welsh language SEO: how Google handles Welsh searches, what a bilingual page ranks for, and the hreflang pair that tells it which is which

Google indexes Welsh-language pages, detects the language from the text rather than from a tag, and ranks them for Welsh searches when the page is really Welsh: a full page of Welsh text, with its own address, its own title and its own description, paired with the English page through hreflang so that Google knows the two are versions of one thing and not two competing pages. A Welsh page that is an English page with a few translated headings is treated as English, and a Welsh page with no English pair competes with its own twin. This site's own Search Console shows the method working on a small scale: in the 30 days to 3 October 2026, searches typed in Welsh for website design, dylunio gwefannau Cymru and dylunio gwefannau gogledd Cymru, reached our Welsh pages at positions six and seven, on nineteen impressions each.

What Google actually does with a Welsh page

• It reads the language from the words, not from the lang attribute or the URL. The attribute should still be set, for screen readers and for browsers, but Google decides for itself. A page that is half English is read as English.
• It matches Welsh searches to Welsh pages. A person who types dylunio gwefannau gets Welsh results, and a Welsh page that answers the search can rank above an English page that would rank first for the English equivalent.
• It treats the two versions as duplicates unless told otherwise. Without hreflang, Google picks one, usually the English, and the Welsh page's signals are folded into it or ignored.
• It does not translate for ranking. The Welsh page ranks for the Welsh words on it. A page that says gwefan ranks for gwefan, not for website.

The hreflang pair

Each page in each language carries two link elements in its head: one pointing at itself with its language, one pointing at its twin. The Welsh code is cy; with the region, cy-GB and en-GB. Both pages must carry both links, pointing at each other, or Google ignores the pair. The sitemap carries the same relationship, with the alternate links under each URL. On this site the pairing is read from one list, where every Welsh guide names its English original, so that the head, the language switch and the sitemap cannot disagree.

The commonest fault we audit: a Welsh page whose canonical tag points at the English page. The site thinks it is being tidy; Google reads it as an instruction to ignore the Welsh version, and does.

What a bilingual page ranks for

Welsh searches are smaller than English ones for the same thing, and they are typed by people who chose the language. The Keyword Planner reports very few of them, which is not the same as none; our own Welsh queries above were not in any Planner export and arrived anyway. The Welsh page is written for the search a Welsh speaker would type, with the Welsh word for the service and the Welsh name of the place, Caerdydd, Abertawe, Wrecsam, Gwynedd, and not for a translation of the English keyword. Where the Welsh term is the one in common use, the English page can carry it too: a Welsh business is searched for in both languages by the same person on different days.

The faults that stop a Welsh page ranking

1. A Welsh page served by a translation overlay, where the HTML is English and the Welsh appears by script. Google indexes the English. The test is to view the source and look for the Welsh.
2. Welsh pages behind a language cookie, where the same address serves either language depending on a setting. Google sees one address and one language. Each language needs its own address.
3. The canonical fault above, and its cousin: hreflang that points one way only.
4. A Welsh title copied from the English, or a machine translation of it, which reads oddly and matches no search a person types.
5. Thin Welsh: a page with the headings in Welsh and the paragraphs in English, or a Welsh page half the length of its twin. The ranking follows the words that are there.

The Welsh place names, and the two spellings

A Welsh business is searched for under both names of its town, and the two are not interchangeable to Google. Caerdydd and Cardiff, Abertawe and Swansea, Wrecsam and Wrexham, Caernarfon with and without the English spelling that older signs carried: each is its own search, typed by a different person or by the same person in a different mood. The Welsh page carries the Welsh name as its main one and the English name once, in a sentence that explains the pairing; the English page does the reverse. A page that uses only the English name on both sides loses the Welsh search entirely, and a Welsh page that uses the English name in its title reads as a translation rather than a page. The county names follow the same rule: Gwynedd and Ceredigion are the same in both languages, Sir Gaerfyrddin is not Carmarthenshire to the index, and Ynys Môn and Anglesey are two searches with two sets of results.

How to read it in Search Console

Filter the Performance report by page to the Welsh folder, then look at the queries. Welsh searches appear as typed, with their mutations and without, and a page that ranks for them will show positions in the single figures on small impression counts long before the English page does, because there is less competition. That is the signal to write the next Welsh page for the next Welsh search, rather than translating the English pages in order. The SEO page describes how we read both languages each month; the bilingual page describes how the twin pages are built so that the pairing is never guessed.