Not every customer types "silk saree shop near me". Some type "सिल्क साड़ी", some type "silk saree ni dukan", and many type a mix of English and Hindi in Roman letters, like "sasti saree kaha milegi". Voice search adds even more variety. If your website only speaks formal English, you may be invisible to a large share of your local market.
Three kinds of local-language searches
- Native script: Hindi in Devanagari (साड़ी), Gujarati in Gujarati script (સાડી). Common on phones with local-language keyboards and with voice search.
- Transliterated (Hinglish or Gujlish): local words in Roman letters, such as "saree kitne ki hai", "ghar banavva mate contractor".
- Mixed: English product words with local grammar, such as "wedding saree under 5000 surat mein".
Google treats each as a different search with its own results. That's an opportunity, because far fewer websites target them.
Spelling is not standard
Transliterated words have no single correct spelling, and customers use all of them. One product can be searched as saree, sari or sadi, and one phrase as "kaha milegi", "kahan milegi" or "kaha milega". In Gujarati Roman script, "dukan" and "dukaan", or "mate" and "maate", both appear.
Google connects many of these spellings, but not all of them, and the results can differ. Check the two or three most common spellings for your main phrases with autocomplete, use the most common one in headings, and let the others appear naturally in FAQs, captions and alt text. Don't stuff every variant into one sentence.
How to find them
- Listen to customers. How do they phrase things on WhatsApp and phone calls? That's your keyword list.
- Google autocomplete works in every language. Type in Hindi or Gujarati script, or in Hinglish, and note the suggestions.
- Google Keyword Planner lets you choose the language, including Hindi and Gujarati, and location, to see volume for native-script terms.
- Google Trends can compare an English term with its Hindi or Hinglish version in a specific state.
- YouTube search shows how people search for videos, which is often in the local language.
- Search Console: look at the searches your site already appears for. You may find Hinglish searches you never targeted.
The keyword ideas tool accepts seed keywords in any language or script, so you can expand Hinglish seeds the same way as English ones.
A worked example
Take a waterproofing contractor in Ahmedabad. Their English keywords are easy to guess: "terrace waterproofing Ahmedabad", "bathroom leakage repair". Their enquiries tell a different story:
- "terrace ma pani tapke che" (Gujarati in Roman script: water is dripping from the terrace)
- "bathroom ni diwal ma bhej" (damp in the bathroom wall)
- "chhat se pani tapakna solution" (Hindi: water dripping from the roof)
- "छत से पानी टपकना" (the same, in Devanagari)
None of these contain the word "waterproofing", yet every one comes from someone with the exact problem the contractor solves. A short guide section or FAQ answering "terrace ma pani tapke che, shu karvu?" in Gujarati, alongside the English service page, can reach searchers no competitor is targeting.
Should you translate your website?
It depends on your customers.
- If most of your customers prefer a local language, create proper translated pages: a Hindi or Gujarati version of your important pages, written by a fluent person, not machine translation left unchecked.
- If your customers are mixed, keep English as the main language, and add local-language sections where they help, such as an FAQ in Gujarati or a Hindi summary on service pages.
- For Hinglish searches, you don't need a separate language version. Use the common phrases naturally in headings, FAQs and descriptions where they fit.
Doing multilingual pages properly
If you create separate language versions:
- Give each its own URL, such as
/hi/and/gu/folders. Don't switch languages on the same URL with a button, because search engines will only see one version. - Set the language in the HTML, such as
<html lang="hi">or<html lang="gu">. - Add hreflang tags linking each version to the others, so Google shows the right one to each searcher:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IN" href="https://example.com/sarees">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="hi-IN" href="https://example.com/hi/sarees">
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="gu-IN" href="https://example.com/gu/sarees">
Each version lists all the others and itself. Add hreflang="x-default" pointing to the version for everyone else, usually English.
4. Translate the meta tags too: the title tag, meta description and image alt text.
5. Let people switch with a visible language link, never an automatic redirect based on location.
6. Keep URLs in English letters. A slug like /gu/સાડી works, but it becomes a long string of codes such as %E0%AA%B8%E0%AA%BE... whenever someone copies or shares it. /gu/sadi or /gu/silk-saree stays readable.
Voice search
Voice searches are longer and more conversational, and on Android phones many are spoken in Hindi or Gujarati. People say "paas mein saree ki dukan kaun si khuli hai" rather than typing "saree shop near me". Pages that answer questions in plain, spoken language, with the answer in the first sentence, suit these searches best, and so does a complete Google Business Profile with correct hours.
Local language on Google Business Profile
Your Business Profile is in one language, but customer reviews come in many. Reply in the language the customer used. It's friendlier, and the words in reviews and replies add local-language context to your listing.
Local language on Instagram and YouTube
Social search is where local-language content does especially well. Reels and videos in Hindi or Gujarati with matching captions, hashtags and on-screen text can reach audiences English content misses. See the guides to Instagram SEO and YouTube SEO.
Write naturally
Whatever the language, write for the reader. Forcing awkward phrases like "saree kaha milega surat best shop" into sentences reads badly in any language. Use local-language terms where your customers would expect them, and let the content do the rest.
For the full keyword process, from seed keywords to a page-by-page plan, see keyword research for beginners.
