We are currently building a website in two languages. It is for a small web and consulting business we plan to open here in the Petite-Nation later this year, and it must work in French and in English from the first day.
We set one rule before starting: not to spend on our own site what we would ask a client to spend on theirs. The rule is already proving useful. It consistently leads toward choices we have recommended to others for years, and have not always applied ourselves.
Which language should come first?
French, with English as a complete second version. The Petite-Nation is mostly French-speaking. There are also English-speaking residents, cottage owners who drive up from Ottawa, and tourists in summer. French is therefore the default, and English is a full second version of the site, not an afterthought.
We have seen many "bilingual" sites in Quebec where the English side consists of three pages and a contact form, or of a machine translation no one reviewed. Visitors notice. An English speaker looking for a plumber in Saint-André-Avellin will call the one whose site they can actually read. A French speaker will leave as soon as the French sounds translated from English, and with good reason.
Every page is therefore written for each reader: the same information, phrased as a native speaker of each language would say it. This takes time. The writing is already expected to take longer than all the technical work combined.
Why should each language have its own URL?
Because otherwise Google usually sees only one version. This technical point matters more than most people realize.
Each language gets its own address: French pages under /fr/, English pages under /en/. Many sites take a different approach, with a button that swaps the text on the same URL using a cookie or a script. It appears tidy, but it creates a problem for Google, which will usually crawl one version and never see the other.
Google's own page on managing multilingual and multi-regional sites is unambiguous: use different URLs for each language version, and do not rely on cookies or browser settings to determine which language a visitor sees. It is technical reading, but we recommend it to anyone building a bilingual site in Quebec before a single line of code is written.
How does Google know which pages are translations?
Through hreflang tags. Once there are two URLs, Google must be told that they are the same page in two languages. Each French page points to its English counterpart and to itself, and the English page does the same in return. We mark the French pages fr-CA and the English ones en-CA, with French as the default for visitors whose language Google cannot determine.
If this is configured incorrectly, Google may show the English page to someone searching in French, or treat the two versions as duplicates. If it is configured correctly, nothing is noticeable, which is precisely the objective.
Another step is frequently overlooked: translating the addresses and page titles as well. The French SEO page will be at /fr/services/referencement-seo and the English one at /en/services/seo. The detail appears minor, but it is visible in search results, and it signals to a French speaker that the page was written for them rather than run through a translator.
When are static pages preferable to a CMS?
When no one needs to edit the site every week. We have built Drupal and WordPress sites for most of our working life, and we still recommend WordPress to clients who need to make changes themselves every week. For this project, we chose a static site, and the results so far are satisfactory.
In practice, the text of every page is stored in a few plain files. A small script converts them into ordinary HTML pages in both languages and generates the menus, the hreflang tags and the sitemap. The folder is then uploaded. There is no database, no plugin awaiting updates, and no login page for bots to attack overnight.
The pages load quickly because the server has nothing to calculate; it simply delivers files. There is also very little to attack. Those two advantages alone justify the choice.
The drawback is equally real. Correcting a typo requires editing a file and rebuilding the site. That is acceptable for us, but a restaurant owner who changes the menu every Thursday would find it impractical, and we would not recommend it in that case. The person who will update the site after launch should determine the setup, and that question should be settled before any discussion of technology.
What kind of hosting does a fast site need?
Ordinary hosting is sufficient. A static site requires no special hosting; standard, inexpensive hosting does the job, since the server only delivers files.
We host the fonts on the same server rather than loading them from Google Fonts. This removes one external request from every page, and one more company that can see who is visiting. Photos are compressed before upload. On small business sites in the region, the most common cause of slowness is photos taken straight from a phone, several megabytes each, on a page that displays them at the size of a postage stamp. Correcting that resolves a large part of the speed problem.
Does a small business site need cookies and trackers?
Often not. This is the decision we weighed most carefully.
The plan is no analytics, no advertising pixels and no cookies, and the privacy page will state this in one sentence. As a result, we will not know exactly how many people read each page, which is an acceptable trade-off. Google Search Console shows which searches bring people to a site without adding anything to the page, and the most important indicator is whether people call or write.
There is also a Quebec dimension. Law 25 came into force in stages between 2022 and 2024, and one of its rules requires that tracking technology capable of identifying or profiling a visitor be disabled by default. A site that collects nothing has nothing to explain, and no cookie banner covering half the screen on a phone.
For a business running advertising, the situation is different. Tracking is part of the work, and it should take the form of proper conversion tracking, with consent. For a small business site whose purpose is to be found and generate calls, it is often more than necessary. We recommend starting without it and adding it when there is a clear reason.
What do we recommend to businesses in the region?
The site is not yet live, and a few details may still change before launch. The main choices, however, are sound.
For a small business website in French and English, the technology is the easy part: separate URLs, hreflang tags and a light build. A competent developer can set this up in a few days. The writing is where the time goes, and it is where most bilingual sites fall short. We recommend budgeting for the words.