Serving more than one language.
WHAT THEY DO
Let you maintain content in several languages, with a switcher, and signal to search engines which version serves which audience.
WHAT TO CHECK
Whether it handles your content types and your theme How translations are stored, since this affects migration later Whether it outputs correct hreflang markup Performance impact, which can be substantial
THE TRANSLATION QUESTION
Machine translation ranks poorly and reads badly. If a language matters commercially, have it translated properly.
Translating your main pages well beats translating everything badly.
PERFORMANCE
Multilingual plugins add database queries and complexity. Test the impact, particularly on a large site.
THE SIMPLER ALTERNATIVE
For two languages and a small site, separate installations in subdirectories may be simpler than a plugin, at the cost of managing two sites.
WHAT NOT TO DO
Automatic redirection by visitor location, which prevents search engines crawling other versions and frustrates visitors.
Offer a clear selector instead.
