SEO for multilingual sites: language-specific results without changing URL?

Question

I have a site that has 2 languages: English and Swedish.

What I want is, if someone Googles the site in Sweden, it should show the Swedish results. That is, I want Goo

Answer 1

Here's Google's official documentation on multi-lingual sites. Which has substantially the same information as the blogspot entry you link to. They write:

Keep the content for each language on separate URLs.

and then give advice about what they consider best UX practices.

Given that, if you want an optimal Google experience, you should follow their guidelines and have language-specific urls. Google searches are certainly language-sensitive, and should return the appropriate version of the site when people search for it.

If you're set on having a single URL, how are you intending to set the language? Based on language headers? Javascript detection? Cookies? Those are all potentially problematic for SEO, and since Google doesn't think they're good methods, they don't offer advice on how to optimize SEO using them.

Your best bet is probably to go with Google's advice and have multiple URLs.