Regional language SEO in India: write one language, not five

Short answer: Only if your customers use that language, and then do one, not five. Pick the Indian language your enquiries already arrive in, give it its own URLs, have a native speaker write the pages, link each page to its English twin with hreflang, and answer enquiries in that language. If you have no speaker, no English enquiries yet, or nobody to take the calls, wait.

Most advice on Indian languages ends with “publish in more of them”. Five languages means five sets of pages to write, check and keep current. Our view is narrower: do one properly, and let the results tell you whether to add a second. For the wider picture, read SEO, AEO and GEO in India.

Who needs a second language, and who does not yet

In our view, a second language fits when you sell consumer services to households outside the English-medium metro core, or when your phone and WhatsApp enquiries already arrive in that language. Customers are telling you what they speak.

Our advice is to wait if any of these is true:

• You sell English-medium B2B. Your buyers search and read in English at work.
• Your English pages do not yet bring enquiries. A second language doubles a page set that is not working.
• Nobody on your team can answer an enquiry in that language.
• You have no native speaker to write or check the pages. Translation software does not count as one.

What the numbers say, and what they cannot tell you

The first source is the Census of India 2011, which counts mother tongue across 22 scheduled languages. The top eight:

Language	Speakers (crore)	Share of population
Hindi	52.83	43.63%
Bengali	9.72	8.03%
Marathi	8.30	6.86%
Telugu	8.11	6.70%
Tamil	6.90	5.70%
Gujarati	5.55	4.58%
Urdu	5.08	4.19%
Kannada	4.37	3.61%

Source: Census of India 2011, language tables, Office of the Registrar General. Census of India language tables.

The Hindi figure groups many mother tongues under Hindi. This is the most recent census language data published, and it is from 2011.

The second source is the “Internet in India Report 2024” from IAMAI and Kantar, published in January 2025. We read PTI’s report of the study, not the report itself. PTI’s coverage says “Nearly all internet users (98 per cent) accessed content in Indic languages” and “Over half (about 57 per cent) of urban internet users prefer consuming content in regional languages”. It also puts active internet users in India at 886 million in 2024.

Now the limits. The Census counts mother tongue, not the language someone types into Google, and it is from 2011. The IAMAI and Kantar figure is about consuming content, not about search. Neither tells you what your customers search in.

How to find out which language your own customers use

This is our own method. It costs nothing.

1. Read your search queries. The Performance report in Google Search Console lists the queries your pages appeared for. Look for queries in Devanagari, Tamil or another Indian script, and for queries typed in an Indian language using English letters.
2. Note the language of your calls and WhatsApp messages. For two weeks, tally the language of each new enquiry.
3. Ask at the counter. If customers walk in, ask how they found you and what they typed or said.

If no language other than English stands out, you have your answer for now.

Google reads the page, not the label

Google Search Central says: “Google uses the visible content of your page to determine its language.” It adds that it does not use code-level language information such as lang attributes, or the URL, for this.

So a Hindi label on a page whose visible text is English does nothing. Google reads the English.

There is a second consequence, and this part is our reading, not Google’s. If the main text of a page mixes two languages, Google gets a muddled signal about which language the page is. Keep each page in one language.

Why a translate button does not count

A translate button swaps the text on the same address. On the same Google page: “Google recommends using different URLs for each language version of a page rather than using cookies or browser settings.”

Three rules follow:

• Give each language its own URL.
• Do not redirect by browser language. Google says: “Avoid automatically redirecting users from one language version of a site to a different language version of a site.” Add a visible link to the other versions so the visitor chooses.
• Choose a structure that is not marked against. Google’s table lists country-specific domains, subdomains, subdirectories and URL parameters. URL parameters are the one marked “Not recommended”.

Words in an Indian script in the URL are fine. Google says: “It’s fine to use localized words in the URL, or to use an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN)”, with UTF-8 encoding in the URL.

Translating at scale is named in Google’s spam policy

Google does not ban translation. Its spam policies define scaled content abuse: “Scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.” One example Google lists is “Using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users”. Another is scraping feeds, search results or other content to generate many pages, “including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques”, where little value is provided to users.

So translating appears in the policy as one way of churning out pages from other people’s content. The policy is about purpose and value to users, not the tool.

Here is our reading. Fifty service pages pushed through a machine translator and published unread sit uncomfortably close to that description. A handful of pages written, or properly edited, by a native speaker do not. We are not saying Google penalises machine translation.

Tell Google which page is the Hindi one

Our India guide covers the basics, so this is the short version. Google’s guide to localised versions builds each code from a language and, optionally, a region. Language codes are ISO 639-1 and region codes are ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2. For India, that gives hi-IN for Hindi, ta-IN for Tamil, mr-IN for Marathi and bn-IN for Bengali.

The rule people break is this one. Google says: “Each language version must list itself as well as all other language versions.” And: “If two pages don’t both point to each other, the tags will be ignored.”

Google also reserves x-default: “The reserved x-default value is used when no other language/region matches the user’s browser setting.”

You can place the tags in the page HTML, in HTTP headers or in your sitemap. Google says “The three methods are equivalent from Google’s perspective.”

Google’s AI answers now come in Indian languages

This is what Google announced, on the dates it announced it. On 15 August 2024, Google India said AI Overviews were coming to India “in English and Hindi”, with a toggle to switch between English and Hindi results and a Listen button. It also wrote: “Indian users listen to AI Overviews responses more often than other countries.”

On 8 October 2025, Google India said it was “rolling out AI Mode in Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu”, powered by a custom Gemini model for Search “which goes beyond simple translation”.

We do not claim that publishing in a language gets you cited. Our reading is smaller. If the answer is written in Marathi, a page already written in Marathi is at least available to be quoted, and an English-only site is asking Google to translate on its behalf. For the English side of the same question, see how to rank in Google AI Overviews.

Your map listing takes one name in one script

Google’s Business Profile guidelines say the name must reflect the real-world name as used consistently on the storefront. Google lists repeated bilingual names and script transliterations as not acceptable. Its example is a name written in Latin letters and then again in another script, which is not acceptable, while the single Latin-letter name is acceptable. Google says this applies even if it appears this way on physical storefront signage.

So a board in two scripts still means one name on the profile. For the rest of the listing, see our guide to local SEO for Indian small businesses.

A worked example: a Nagpur repair business adds Marathi

This is an invented example, not a client. Take a home appliance repair business in Nagpur with an English website. The decisions, in order:

1. Check the enquiry language. The owner reads the last few weeks of calls and WhatsApp messages. If most first messages are in Marathi, that is the signal. If they are mostly English, the business waits.
2. Write five or six pages first. The home page, the two main services, the service areas, the contact page and one question-and-answer page.
3. Use a subdirectory. The Marathi pages sit in a /mr/ folder on the same site, with no auto-redirect and a visible link to switch language.
4. Have a Marathi speaker write the pages. If a tool makes a first draft, the speaker rewrites and checks every sentence, including prices and area names.
5. Pair the hreflang tags. Each Marathi page and its English twin list each other and themselves, using mr-IN and en-IN.
6. Answer in Marathi. The phone and WhatsApp are answered in Marathi in working hours.

What the owner would watch is enquiries by language: how many calls and messages arrive in Marathi, and how many become jobs.

What it costs you in upkeep

We are not putting prices here. The real cost is that every page now exists twice. Every price change, hours change and new service has to be made in both languages, and somebody has to answer in that language every working day.

For agency pricing, see what SEO costs in India. If you want help, that is part of our SEO, AEO and GEO service, and we are an agency, so we have an interest. In Tamil Nadu, our Chennai pricing guide treats Tamil content as a budget line.

Frequently asked questions

Is regional language SEO worth it for a small business in India? It can be, for some businesses and not yet for others. In our view it fits consumer services sold outside the English-medium metro core, and businesses whose phone and WhatsApp enquiries already arrive in an Indian language. It does not yet fit English-medium B2B, a business whose English pages bring no enquiries, or one with nobody who can answer in that language. Check your own Search Console queries before you spend anything.

Which Indian language should I start with? The one your own customers already use, not the one with the most speakers. The 2011 Census puts Hindi first, then Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil, but it counts mother tongue, not the language people type into Google. Look at your Search Console queries, your calls and your WhatsApp messages. Pick one language, and only if someone on your team speaks it well enough to write and check the pages.

Can I use Google Translate for my Hindi or Tamil pages? As a starting draft at most. A native speaker must rewrite and check every page before it goes live. Google does not ban translation, but its spam policy on scaled content abuse lists ‘automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques’ among the ways of generating many pages from scraped content with little value to users. In our view, pages pushed through a translator and published unread sit uncomfortably close to that. A handful of pages written or edited by a native speaker do not.

Should Hindi pages use Devanagari or English letters? This is our advice only, because we have no Google source on how romanised Hindi is treated. Write in the script your customers read. Check your own Search Console queries to see whether they type in Devanagari or in Hindi using English letters, and match what they type. If the data is thin, ask at the counter. We do not state how Google treats romanised text.

Do I need hreflang if I only have English and one Indian language? It is the method Google documents for telling it about each language version, so we would add it. Google says each language version must list itself as well as all other language versions, and that if two pages do not both point to each other, the tags will be ignored. You can add the tags in the page HTML, in HTTP headers or in the sitemap, and Google says the three methods are equivalent.

Will regional language pages help me appear in Google’s AI answers? We cannot promise that. Google announced AI Overviews in English and Hindi in August 2024 and AI Mode in Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu in October 2025, but it has not told us that publishing in a language gets you cited. Our reading is that a page already written in the language of the answer is at least available to be quoted. Treat it as a reason to write well, not as a guarantee.

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