SEO in Cardiff: Welsh and accessibility are acceptance criteria here, not extras

A Cardiff search scope carries two line items that an English quote usually leaves out: bilingual provision and accessibility to a recognised standard. For public bodies and the firms that supply them, which is a larger share of this market than it is in most British cities, both are conditions of acceptance rather than enhancements, so a proposal that ignores them is not cheaper, it is incomplete. For a private business both are among the cheapest competitive advantages available in Wales, because most local competitors have done neither properly. Put both in the brief before you compare prices, and quotes that looked unrelated become comparable.

Why these two land harder here than across the Severn

Cardiff is a capital city of roughly 370,000 people inside a country of about three million, and the institutions of that country sit here: the Senedd, the Welsh Government, the health boards, the national cultural bodies and the universities. In a city this size that concentration matters, because a large buyer sets the habits of a market. Agencies here quote bilingual work as standard because their public sector clients require it.

Welsh language duties for public bodies are statutory and are overseen by the Welsh Language Commissioner. Accessibility sits on the duties in the Equality Act 2010, and public sector sites also have to meet a recognised standard and publish a statement about it. Bid for that work and both appear in the tender.

The bilingual structure, and the two things that make it work

Welsh is not a translation task added at the end of a build. It is an architecture decision, and the options are different purchases.

• English only. Reasonable for plenty of firms selling business to business.
• Selective provision. The pages a Welsh speaking customer is most likely to need, so contact, complaints, the core services and anything safety related, with the rest in English.
• Full bilingual, built as two parallel page sets. Every page exists in both languages, each at its own address.

Two technical points decide whether any of that is findable. Each language needs its own stable address, usually under a language path, rather than text that swaps inside a single page, because content that appears only after a click cannot be indexed as a page in its own right. And the language annotations have to be correct, with the Welsh pages marked as Welsh for the United Kingdom, the English pages marked as English, and each pointing at the other as an alternate. Done properly, that tells a search engine these are two versions for two readers rather than duplicate content competing with itself.

Use a translator who works in your subject, and give the job a named Welsh speaking approver with a slot in the schedule. Welsh has a technical and legal register, and an approximate Welsh page selling a regulated service reads worse to a Welsh speaker than a straightforward English one. Bilingual projects lose their weeks in an inbox, and one named person with a date is the fix.

Accessibility work that is also search work

A good deal of what an accessibility review asks for is the same work a technical search audit asks for, which is why pricing them as separate projects wastes money. The overlap is specific:

• A correct heading order, one level at a time, describing the content rather than styling it.
• Link text that says where it goes, instead of read more repeated down the page.
• Real text rather than words inside images, which a screen reader and a crawler are both unable to read.
• Labelled form fields, which also reduces abandoned enquiries.
• Descriptive alternative text on images that carry meaning, and unique page titles.

Colour contrast, keyboard operation and video captions do nothing directly for search, and they still belong in the same job because the developer is already inside the template. Ask for one combined remediation list in priority order and you buy the overlap once.

Naming places when the page set covers a country

Most Cardiff businesses sell beyond the city, so page naming has to be deliberate. Put Cardiff on the pages where a Cardiff address is the point, such as contact, the office page and any service a customer travels to you for. Use Wales on the service pages you want national enquiries from. Both words on every page weakens each one.

Publish location pages only for places you can name a real job in, with the travel or delivery arrangement stated, because a buyer in Bangor will ask before they ring. A page per Welsh town with the name swapped is the pattern search engines treat as thin, and it tells a customer in the north how little thought went into serving them.

Plenty of Cardiff businesses also sell into Bristol and the west of England as naturally as into the valleys. If that is you, keep one site, with service pages that do not lead with a place name and location pages for each side underneath. Two sites means two of everything to maintain and two weaker pages competing for the same service.

The local pack, and where a Cardiff pin stops working

Cardiff is compact, so one well kept Google Business Profile at a staffed address covers a large share of the city. What will not fall to a Cardiff pin are the other urban centres, because Newport, Bridgend, Swansea and the valleys towns are separate markets with their own local results. Serve them without an office and you set a service area rather than inventing an address, supported by a page naming actual jobs there. A profile at a desk you do not staff is the quickest way to lose the listing entirely.

Measurement, when Search Console has no row for Wales

Search Console reports by country, and Wales sits inside United Kingdom, so there is no Wales filter to apply. Build the measurement from what does exist, and agree it before the work starts with today's figures written down.

• Performance by page, with your Wales facing pages grouped and the Welsh language pages reported as their own group.
• Query reports filtered to the place names that matter to you, which is how Swansea or Wrexham demand becomes visible separately.
• Enquiry postcodes captured on the form, which is the only honest record of where work came from.
• Profile insights for the local half, kept apart from organic.

Pricing a scope that has two extra lines in it

Ask every firm for the number of days a month and the grade of person on each day, then check whether the Welsh work and the accessibility remediation sit inside that number or beside it. Translation, Welsh proofing and bilingual quality assurance are real hours and belong on the page as their own line, as does developer time for remediation. Fees are normally quoted before VAT, and advertising spend never sits inside a search fee.

Then ask what lands in month one. It should be something you could check yourself: the page and language map with the addresses written out, the combined technical and accessibility list in priority order, and the measurement baseline. The wider ground rules for British search sit in our note on what actually differs for UK search, and the supplier vetting questions are covered in how to hire an SEO company in the UK.

SEO in Cardiff: the questions about Welsh, accessibility and the rest of Wales

Do we actually need a Welsh version of the site?

If you are a public body or bidding for public work, treat it as required and budget for it from the start. If you are a private business it is a commercial decision, and the strongest case is consumer facing work and anything in health, education, housing or advice. Selective provision done well beats a full bilingual site done badly.

Does a .wales or .cymru domain help?

They are legitimate addresses and they signal something real to a Welsh audience, so treat the benefit as trust and recognition rather than ranking. Keep one main site and point any additional domains at it, because splitting your content across two addresses is the part that costs you.

Is accessibility work worth paying for if we are not a public body?

Yes. The duties in the Equality Act 2010 apply to service providers generally, and most of the structural fixes are the ones a technical search audit asks for anyway, so one piece of developer time buys two outcomes.

Who signs off the Welsh copy?

A named Welsh speaker with authority over the subject matter, agreed before writing starts and given dates in the schedule alongside the designer and the developer. Treat it as a review stage with a deadline, not a favour.

The answer a buyer gets when the question has the word Wales in it

Ask an assistant to name suppliers in Wales for something your business does and the reply comes back short. It is assembled from a far smaller pool of Welsh sources than the English equivalent, so a handful of firms end up standing in for a whole country while everybody else is absent from the answer. For a Cardiff business that is an opening, because the sources behind those replies are reachable: trade bodies, Welsh directories, the Welsh press and sector listings. AI Knows Us exists to show which names come back for your category and which pages the answer was built from, and a scan will tell you whether Wales is thin in your field and whether the missing name is yours.