In short
If you read nothing else
- Yes, if you serve customers in Spanish, and start small: say “hablamos español” on your home page, then add Spanish Home and Contact pages on their own web addresses, reviewed by a fluent person and linked both ways. The planner below writes Google’s tags and checks them.
- In El Paso, 63.7% of residents age 5 and over speak Spanish at home, and 38.3% of them, about 155,000 people, speak English less than “very well” (Census, 2020–2024).
- Yet when we checked 56 El Paso small-business websites on October 24, 2026, only 3 had a working Spanish version, and the 43 trade and restaurant sites showed no sign of Spanish at all.
- Some sales legally require Spanish when you sell in Spanish, including contracts signed at a customer’s home in Texas and used-car Buyers Guides. Health programs that get federal funds must post a language-assistance notice.
What the numbers say
The Census Bureau’s language survey shows how bilingual El Paso is. In the 2020–2024 American Community Survey, 63.7% of El Paso residents age 5 and over speak Spanish at home. Among them, 38.3% speak English less than “very well”: about 155,000 people.
- Speak Spanish at home
- 63.7%
- Of them, speak English less than “very well”
- 38.3%
- Everyone 5+ who speaks English less than “very well”
- 25.1%
406,137 people
155,551 people
All languages
That doesn’t mean every business needs a full Spanish website. It means a quarter of the city may read your English site with some effort, and some won’t read it at all. What you do about that depends on who your customers are.
What we found on El Paso sites
On October 24, 2026, we checked the home pages of 56 El Paso small businesses with their own websites: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, roofing, dental, auto repair, landscaping, cleaning and pest control, law firms, independent insurance agencies and restaurants. We took them in order from “best rated” directory lists, skipped chains, and looked for three signs of Spanish: a working Spanish version, a translation button, or a line saying staff speak Spanish.
In a city where nearly two in three residents speak Spanish at home, every one of the 56 home pages was written in English. All three working Spanish versions belonged to law firms. Across the 43 plumbers, electricians, HVAC and roofing companies, auto shops, landscapers, cleaners and restaurants we checked, including three Mexican restaurants, we found no Spanish signal at all. That doesn’t mean no one there speaks Spanish. It means a customer can’t tell from the website.
The few Spanish versions we found also showed what goes wrong:
- A Spanish page whose code still declared it English, with no hreflang tags linking it to the English page.
- A “Spanish” page where only the menu was translated and the main text stayed in English.
- A language switch pointing to a Spanish web address that didn’t load at all.
Each of those is easy to avoid with the steps below.
Start small, and say it first
Step 1 · everyone who can serve in Spanish
Say it. One line on your home and contact pages: who speaks Spanish, and when.
Step 2 · regular Spanish-speaking customers
Two or three Spanish pages. Home, Contact and Services on their own addresses, reviewed by a fluent person.
Step 3 · many customers prefer Spanish
A full Spanish site, kept in step with the English one whenever prices or services change.
Required · whatever your choice
Spanish documents when you sell in Spanish at the customer’s home, sell used cars in Spanish, advertise in Spanish, or run a federally funded health program. See below.
The cheapest step takes five minutes: say on your English home page and contact page whether someone can help in Spanish, and when. “Hablamos español. Call [your number], Monday to Friday, 8 to 5.” A customer who reads English with effort will find it, and you’ve set an honest expectation.
Then translate the pages that do the most work, in this order:
Home: who you are, what you do, and that you serve customers in Spanish.
Contact: how to reach someone who speaks Spanish, and when.
Services: in the words Spanish-speaking customers actually use for what you do.
On your Google Business Profile, use one business name. Google’s guidelines prohibit repeating the same name in multiple languages, even if your storefront sign shows both. Our profile checklist covers the rest.
How to do it so Google understands
Google’s guidance for multilingual sites is unusually specific:
- A separate web address for each language. Google recommends different URLs for each language version, rather than switching languages with cookies or browser settings. A folder like /es/ is usually simplest.
- One language per page. Google advises against side-by-side translations.
- No automatic redirects. “Avoid automatically redirecting users from one language version of a site to a different language version.” Link to the other language instead, so visitors choose.
- Connect each pair with hreflang tags. “Each language version must list itself as well as all other language versions,” and if two pages don’t point to each other, Google ignores the tags.
- Google reads the words, not the labels. Google uses the visible text to decide a page’s language. Still mark each page’s language in the code (
lang="es"): WCAG requires it so screen readers pronounce the page correctly.
Done this way, your Spanish pages aren’t duplicate content: Google says localized versions are only treated as duplicates when the main content stays untranslated.
Machine translation: a draft, not a page
Machine translation is a fine first draft. As a published page, it has two problems. Customers notice: a price, a warranty or a set of instructions that reads oddly costs trust. And Google’s spam policies name pages generated at scale through “automated transformations like synonymizing, translating” to manipulate rankings. A handful of translated pages for real customers isn’t that, but it’s a reason to keep a person in the loop.
Our rule: let a tool draft it, then have a fluent person read every page before it goes live, especially prices, hours, anything about money, health or legal terms. For health practices that receive federal funds, that isn’t just good practice. The Section 1557 rule requires a qualified human translator to review machine translation of critical content.
When Spanish is required
For most businesses, Spanish pages are a choice. In some situations, Spanish documents are the law. If you sell in Spanish, these apply:
| Situation | Rule | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| Selling at the customer’s home or away from your place of business | Texas Business & Commerce Code §601.052; FTC Cooling-Off Rule, 16 CFR 429.1 | The receipt or contract must be in the same language as the one principally used in the sales presentation. |
| Consumer loans, vehicle installment contracts and certain home-equity loans negotiated in Spanish | Texas Finance Code §341.502(a-1) | The customer must get a summary of the terms in Spanish. |
| Used-car sales conducted in Spanish | FTC Used Car Rule, 16 CFR 455.5 | The window Buyers Guide and contract disclosures must be in Spanish. |
| Advertising in Spanish, where a disclosure is already required | FTC enforcement policy, 16 CFR 14.9 | That required disclosure appears in the language of the ad’s audience. |
| Health programs that receive federal funds | HHS Section 1557 rule, 45 CFR 92.11 and 92.201 | Post a notice that language help is available, in English and at least the 15 languages most commonly spoken by people with limited English in Texas, including on your website. Have a qualified human translator review machine translation of critical content. |
The first row matters most for home-service businesses. Roofers, HVAC companies and others who quote and sign at the customer’s home are covered by Texas’s home-solicitation law and the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule: if the pitch was in Spanish, the contract and cancellation notice must be in Spanish too.
For health programs, the Section 1557 notice requirement applied from July 2025. In June 2026, HHS published a notice that certain other provisions of the rule had been vacated, and said the rest of the rule remains in force; the notice and translation provisions weren’t among those vacated.
Plan your Spanish pages
Enter your web address, pick your first pages and adjust their addresses to match your site. The planner puts them in order, writes the hreflang tags for each pair, and lists the checks to run. Once your pages are live, paste their code into the checker to catch the mistakes we found on local sites.
Spanish page planner
Pick the pages to translate. You get the order to do them in, the tags that tell Google which page is which, and the checks to run. Nothing is saved or sent.
Leave it blank to see an example.
1. Do them in this order
- Home: https://yourbusiness.com/es/
- Contact: https://yourbusiness.com/es/contact
- Services: https://yourbusiness.com/es/services
2. Tags for each pair of pages
<!-- Home: put these lines in the <head> of BOTH https://yourbusiness.com/ and https://yourbusiness.com/es/ --> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yourbusiness.com/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://yourbusiness.com/es/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourbusiness.com/" /> <!-- Contact: put these lines in the <head> of BOTH https://yourbusiness.com/contact and https://yourbusiness.com/es/contact --> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yourbusiness.com/contact" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://yourbusiness.com/es/contact" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourbusiness.com/contact" /> <!-- Services: put these lines in the <head> of BOTH https://yourbusiness.com/services and https://yourbusiness.com/es/services --> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://yourbusiness.com/services" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://yourbusiness.com/es/services" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://yourbusiness.com/services" />
3. Before you publish
- A fluent speaker reads every Spanish page, especially prices, hours and anything about money or health.
- Each Spanish page is in Spanish only, not side by side with English.
- Spanish pages declare their language:
<html lang="es">. - Every page has a visible link to the other language. No automatic redirects based on the visitor’s language.
- Someone can actually answer the phone or a message in Spanish, and the Contact page says when.
4. Check your tags once the pages are live
Open each page, view its source (in Chrome: right-click, View page source), copy the top of the page through the end of the head section, and paste it below.
If your current site can’t support Spanish pages at all, our guide Does your website need a redesign? helps you decide what to do. Our local SEO guide covers the rest of getting found in El Paso, and our review guide works for replies in either language.
In the Army, an order nobody understands isn’t an order. In El Paso, a website your customers can’t comfortably read isn’t doing its job. Say it in their language, and make sure someone can answer in it.
Questions owners ask
Will Spanish pages hurt my English rankings?
Not if they’re set up properly. Google says localized versions of a page are only considered duplicates if the main content stays untranslated. Give each language its own web address and connect each pair with hreflang tags.
Can I just add a Google Translate button to my site?
It helps some visitors read the page, but it’s machine translation, and a widget usually swaps the words in the visitor’s browser on the same web address. Google recommends a different address for each language version. For pages that matter, publish reviewed Spanish pages of their own.
Should my Google Business Profile be in Spanish?
Use one business name. Google’s guidelines prohibit repeating the same business name in multiple scripts or languages, even if your storefront sign shows both. Visitors can choose which language they read reviews in through their own Google account settings.
Most of my customers speak English. Do I still need Spanish?
Not necessarily a full Spanish site. But in El Paso, about a quarter of residents age 5 and over speak English less than “very well.” At minimum, say on your home page whether someone can help in Spanish, and when.
My dental practice takes Medicaid. What applies to us?
Practices that receive federal financial assistance are generally covered by the Section 1557 rule, which requires a notice that language help is available, including on your website, and human review of machine-translated critical content. HHS’s June 2026 notice of vacatur didn’t include those provisions. Ask a health-care lawyer to confirm how it applies to you.
Good guides from elsewhere
Free guides from Google, government agencies and other publishers that go further on this topic. We picked them by hand, checked them on October 24, 2026, and earn nothing from these links.
- Google Search CentralTranslated Google Search results (opens in a new tab)How Google may machine-translate search results for some searchers, and why your own Spanish pages still matter.
- W3C InternationalizationDeclaring language in HTML (opens in a new tab)For whoever builds your site: how to mark each page’s language correctly.
- W3C InternationalizationGuiding users to translated pages (opens in a new tab)How to design a language switch that visitors can find and trust.
- HHS Office for Civil RightsLimited English Proficiency (LEP) (opens in a new tab)For clinics and dental practices: federal language-access resources.
- Federal Trade CommissionDealer’s Guide to the Used Car Rule (opens in a new tab)Including when a dealer must post the Spanish Buyers Guide.
- U.S. Department of JusticeLimited English Proficiency (opens in a new tab)Federal language-access information and resources.
- U.S. Census BureauLanguage Use (opens in a new tab)The Census Bureau’s language data, if you want the numbers for your own area.
Sources
Checked on October 24, 2026. Platforms change their tools and documentation often; if something here no longer matches what you see, the source is the authority. Tell us at pb@primebridgeenterprises.com and we’ll fix the guide.
- U.S. Census Bureau. S1601: Language Spoken at Home, American Community Survey 2020–2024 5-year estimates (El Paso city) (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central. Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central. Tell Google about localized versions of your page (opens in a new tab)
- Google Search Central. Spam policies for Google web search (scaled content abuse) (opens in a new tab)
- Google Business Profile Help. Guidelines for representing your business on Google (opens in a new tab)
- Google Maps Help. Add, edit, or delete Google Maps reviews & ratings (opens in a new tab)
- W3C. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2: Language of Page and Language of Parts (opens in a new tab)
- Texas Legislature. Business & Commerce Code Chapter 601, Cancellation of Certain Consumer Transactions (§601.052) (opens in a new tab)
- Texas Legislature. Finance Code §341.502, Contracts negotiated in Spanish (opens in a new tab)
- eCFR. 16 CFR 429.1, FTC Cooling-Off Rule (opens in a new tab)
- eCFR. 16 CFR 455.5, Used Car Rule: Spanish language sales (opens in a new tab)
- eCFR. 16 CFR 14.9, Requirements concerning clear and conspicuous disclosures in foreign language advertising (opens in a new tab)
- eCFR. 45 CFR Part 92, Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities (§§92.11, 92.201) (opens in a new tab)
- Federal Register. Notice of Vacatur Regarding Certain Provisions of the 2024 Section 1557 Final Rule (June 2, 2026) (opens in a new tab)