You moved to Spain. Now your business needs to follow.

You sorted the NIE. You registered as autonomo. You found a gestor who actually answers emails. But somewhere between the padron and the residencia, you realised your business needs a website that works in Spain — not just a copy of what you had back in the UK or the Netherlands.

Web design for expats in Spain comes with a specific set of challenges that most agencies either do not understand or choose to ignore. Bilingual content, dual-currency payments, reaching both local Spanish customers and your international network, getting found on Google.es and Google.co.uk simultaneously — these are real problems that need real solutions.

This guide covers exactly what you need to know to build a website for your business as an expat in Spain, written by someone who has been through every step of it.

The bilingual website question: what actually needs translating

The first question every expat business owner asks: do I need a bilingual website in Spain? The answer depends on who pays you.

If your customers are predominantly English-speaking expats and international clients, a fully bilingual site is not strictly necessary. But if you serve any local Spanish customers — and most expat businesses eventually do — you need at least core pages in Spanish.

Pages that should be in both languages

At minimum, translate your homepage, services pages, contact page, and legal pages (aviso legal, politica de privacidad). Spanish law requires certain legal disclosures, and these must be in Spanish regardless of your target audience.

Your blog, case studies, and detailed service descriptions can stay in English if that is your primary audience. Translating everything sounds thorough, but 40 poorly translated pages do more damage than 8 excellent ones. Machine translation without human review is obvious to native speakers and kills trust instantly.

How to structure a bilingual website

Use subdirectories, not separate domains. That means forkit.studio/es/ for Spanish content and forkit.studio/ for English. This keeps all your domain authority in one place. A separate .es domain for Spanish splits your SEO value in half and doubles your maintenance workload.

WordPress handles this well with plugins like TranslatePress or WPML. Budget between 100 and 200 euros per year for the plugin licence, plus translation costs. Professional translation for core pages typically runs 0.08 to 0.12 euros per word.

Domain choice: .es vs .com vs something else

This decision matters more than most expats realise. A .es domain signals to Google that your site targets Spain, which helps local rankings. A .com domain is more flexible if you also serve clients outside Spain.

The practical recommendation: register both. Use the .com as your primary domain and redirect the .es to it. This protects your brand name in Spain while keeping your options open for international reach. A .es domain costs roughly 8 to 12 euros per year — cheap insurance.

If your business is purely local (a restaurant in Estepona, a hairdresser in Marbella), go with .es as your primary. Google gives country-code domains a small but measurable ranking boost for local searches.

Google Business Profile: the free listing expats overlook

Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is arguably more important than your website for local visibility. When someone searches “English plumber Estepona” or “British accountant Marbella,” the map pack results appear above organic listings.

Setting up GBP as an expat

You need a physical address in Spain. A PO box does not qualify. If you work from home, you can set your business as a service-area business and hide your home address while still appearing in local results.

Verify your listing by postcard — Google sends a code to your Spanish address. This takes 5 to 14 days. Do not skip verification; unverified listings barely appear in results.

Fill out every single field. Categories matter enormously. If you are a web designer, your primary category should be “Web Designer” with secondary categories like “Internet Marketing Service” and “Graphic Designer.” Add photos of your workspace, your team, your work. Listings with 10 or more photos get 35% more clicks than those without, according to Google’s own data.

Reviews in both languages

Ask happy clients to leave reviews. If you serve both English and Spanish speakers, you will naturally accumulate reviews in both languages. This signals to Google that you serve a diverse audience and strengthens your online presence as an expat business in Spain.

Accepting payments: GBP, EUR, and the practical reality

If you serve British clients from Spain, you need to accept payments in both pounds and euros. Stripe handles multi-currency well and integrates with most WordPress payment plugins. WooCommerce with Stripe lets customers pay in their local currency while you receive euros.

For Spanish clients, consider adding Bizum integration. Over 28 million people in Spain use Bizum for payments. It is as common here as bank transfers. Adding it to your checkout process removes friction for local customers who are used to paying this way.

PayPal works as a fallback but charges higher fees (3.49% plus 0.49 euros per transaction versus Stripe’s 1.5% plus 0.25 euros for European cards). For recurring services, direct debit via GoCardless offers the lowest fees at around 1% plus 0.20 euros.

Local citations and directories that matter in Spain

Local citations — mentions of your business name, address, and phone number on other websites — still influence local rankings. For expat businesses in Spain, the key directories are:

Consistency is critical. Your business name, address, and phone number must be identical across every listing. “C/ San Roque 14” on one site and “Calle San Roque, 14” on another confuses Google and dilutes your citation value.

The autonomo factor: legal requirements for your website

Spanish law requires specific legal information on every commercial website. As an autonomo or SL, you must display:

You also need an aviso legal, a politica de privacidad compliant with GDPR and Spain’s LOPDGDD, and a cookie policy with a compliant cookie banner. Fines for non-compliance start at 900 euros and go up to 600,000 euros for serious violations. This is not optional.

Most website templates marketed to English speakers do not include these pages. Any web design agency for expat businesses worth hiring should handle this as standard, not as an upsell.

Reaching two audiences without splitting your site in half

The trickiest part of building an online presence for an expat business in Spain is serving two distinct audiences: local customers who search in Spanish on Google.es, and international clients who search in English.

The solution is not two separate websites. It is one well-structured site with clear language switching, hreflang tags telling Google which version to show which audience, and content tailored to each group’s search intent.

Your English service pages should target keywords your international audience actually uses. Your Spanish pages should be written for how Spanish speakers search — not just translated from English, but localised with Spanish search patterns in mind. “Diseno web” has different search intent than “web design” even when they describe the same service.

Wondering about how much web design costs in Spain? Budgets vary, but a properly built bilingual site with all legal compliance typically starts around 2,000 to 3,500 euros. Cheap templates miss the legal and bilingual requirements that matter here.

Start with what matters, build from there

You do not need everything on day one. Start with a solid single-language site, proper legal pages, and a verified Google Business Profile. Add the Spanish version once your English site is generating leads. Layer in local citations over the first three months.

The businesses that succeed online in Spain are the ones that treat their website as a living tool, not a one-time project. Build it right from the start and you avoid the expensive rework later.

If you are looking for help finding an English web designer in Spain who understands the expat business landscape, get in touch. We have been through every step of this process ourselves — and we build sites that actually work for businesses like yours on the Costa del Sol.