Sarmeda · Published 5 October 2025 · Vaal Triangle, South Africa

Multilingual SEO in South Africa: Why Adding Local Languages Lifts Your Traffic

A practical guide to EN/AF/zu folders, hreflang, sitemaps, and a 7‑day action plan you can start today.

Why multilingual pages give small businesses an edge

South Africa speaks in many voices. By offering content in English, Afrikaans, and isiZulu first, most local businesses cover a tremendous share of their audience. Multilingual pages don’t just feel welcoming—they also create more opportunities for your site to appear in search results for language‑specific queries.

Good to know: In Search Console you’ll usually see impressions grow before clicks. That’s normal; Google tests your pages for more queries once it understands your language setup.

Google sees and rewards clear language structure

Google relies on consistent URL folders (like /en/, /af/, /zu/), page‑level language attributes (<html lang="…">), and hreflang hints to match users with the right version. Get these right and you earn visibility across multiple audiences without duplicate‑content problems.

Set up a simple 3‑language folder layout

/en/index.html
/en/about.html
/af/index.html
/af/oor.html
/zu/index.html
/zu/mayelana.html
/assets/ (shared small images, icons, CSS)

Keep file names consistent across languages where possible (for example, port.html for the portfolio page in all languages). This makes internal links and sitemaps easier to maintain.

Copy‑paste hreflang into each language twin

Place these tags in the <head> of each pair of pages (EN/AF/zu). Adjust URLs and filenames to match your site:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/en/port.html" hreflang="en" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/af/port.html" hreflang="af" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/zu/port.html" hreflang="zu" />
<link rel="alternate" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/" hreflang="x-default" />

Wire up your sitemap for multilingual pages

Add xhtml:link entries inside each <url> block so Google knows which versions are alternates:

<url>
  <loc>https://sarmeda.co.za/en/port.html</loc>
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/en/port.html" />
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="af" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/af/port.html" />
  <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="zu" href="https://sarmeda.co.za/zu/port.html" />
</url>

Start with three pages per language

Bonus: if you can, add a simple Blog page to publish short updates weekly. Google loves steady, human updates.

A practical 7‑day multilingual SEO action plan

  1. Day 1–2: Create /en, /af, /zu folders. Duplicate Home/Services/Contact.
  2. Day 3–4: Add hreflang tags to each page pair; set <html lang="…">.
  3. Day 5: Update your sitemap with xhtml:link alternates; resubmit in Search Console.
  4. Day 6: Translate essentials; keep filenames consistent across languages.
  5. Day 7: Add internal links between language twins and publish one short blog update.

Next steps