Spanish SEO for UK and US brands entering Spain: how searchers phrase queries, what the google.es results page looks like, and how to research keywords.
Your English site is doing its job in the UK or the US, Spain is on the plan for next year, and someone has already asked for a quote to translate the whole thing. The useful answer is that Spanish SEO is a research job before it is a translation job. The searches your buyers in Spain make are phrased differently, ranked differently and, in a lot of B2B categories, contested by fewer strong sites than you're used to. Get the keyword work right and the content decisions mostly follow.
We've reviewed enough Spanish content plans to know where the first version usually goes wrong. The plan starts from the English keyword list, runs it through a translator, and comes back with terms that are correct Spanish and that no one in Spain types. One client's whole first quarter of Spanish content was built that way before we saw it. The pages were fine. The demand underneath them wasn't.
This piece covers how Spanish searchers phrase things, what the Spanish results page looks like, how to do the keyword research so it maps intent rather than translating words, where Catalan fits, tone, and how to measure it. The structural side, whether Spanish lives on a subfolder or a separate site and how hreflang ties it together, is in our guide to multilingual SEO for Spain, so we won't repeat it here.
How do Spanish searchers phrase things differently?
Three patterns show up in almost every Spanish keyword set we build.
First, queries run longer and lean on questions. Where a UK buyer types "crm for recruitment", a Spanish buyer is more likely to type "qué crm usar para una empresa de selección" or "mejor crm para consultoras de selección". The head term exists, but a larger share of the volume sits in the phrased-out versions, which favours pages with a clear question-and-answer structure in the buyer's own wording.
Second, vocabulary is regional, and the differences are commercial rather than cosmetic. "Ordenador" in Spain, "computadora" in Mexico. "Coche" against "carro". "Móvil" against "celular". A keyword list built by a translator who learned Spanish in Latin America, or by a tool defaulting to a Latin American database, will carry a word the market with volume does not use. Neither is wrong Spanish. Only one is what people in Madrid search.
Third, English loanwords are common in tech and marketing categories and rare in regulated ones. Spanish B2B buyers search "software de onboarding" and "herramientas de email marketing" without blinking. In legal, tax and finance the vocabulary is Spanish and formal, and the English term gets you nothing. Just so you know, for reference: this is the biggest reason a SaaS brand's Spanish keyword research looks nothing like a law firm's.
Is Google the only search engine that matters in Spain?
For practical purposes, yes. StatCounter puts Google at 94.8% of searches in Spain for August 2026, with Bing at 2.7% and Yahoo at 1.6%. The engine is google.es, which is Google with a Spanish country signal, not a different product.
What differs is the results page itself.
In many B2B categories the Spanish SERP is thinner at the top than the UK or US equivalent. Fewer sites have invested in deep Spanish content, so the first page often mixes two or three strong domestic competitors with directories, marketplaces and Spanish editions of international publishers. Páginas Amarillas, Amazon.es and vertical platforms like Idealista take a lot of the commercial clicks in consumer categories. In B2B, Europages and Kompass style listings still rank for terms a properly built page would take within a few months.
AI Overviews have been live in Spain since March 2025, in both Spanish and English. The effect we see matches the UK: informational queries lose clicks, commercial and comparison queries hold up. So put the effort into the pages where someone is choosing a supplier, and treat the top-of-funnel Spanish blog as a visibility play rather than a traffic one.
How do you do Spanish keyword research properly?
The method we use is intent mapping, not translation. Five steps, in this order.
1. Start from English intent, not English keywords
Take the English commercial pages that already earn pipeline and write down what each one is for: the buyer's situation, the job the product does, the alternatives they're comparing. That's the brief. The English keyword is a clue, not the target.
2. Build the Spanish seed list with someone who sells
Give that brief to a native speaker who has sold or bought in the category in Spain, and ask how they'd search for it. Not how they'd translate it. A translator gives you correct words. A salesperson gives you the three phrasings that come up on calls, which is where the demand is.
3. Validate in the Spanish database
Run the seed list through SEMrush with the database set to ES, not the default US one, and pull the related and question reports. Check whether the term the salesperson gave you has volume, and whether a neighbouring phrasing has more. Our guide to international keyword research covers the mechanics across markets; for Spain the rule of thumb is that the Spanish head term is usually one of the top three, and it's rarely the direct translation.
4. Check the regional split in Google Trends
Set Trends to Spain and compare the candidate phrasings by region. Catalonia, the Basque Country and Andalusia can differ on vocabulary. If a term indexes strongly in Latin America and weakly in Spain, you've picked up a Latin American phrasing and it needs swapping.
5. Score and cluster before writing anything
Group the validated terms by intent, score each cluster on volume, difficulty and commercial value, and mark which clusters map to an existing English page and which need something new. That scored sheet is the content plan. It also tells you the sequence: P1 is the cluster with a commercial page behind it and a thin Spanish SERP, and you build outward from there.
I will say, the fastest way to check whether a Spanish keyword plan was researched or translated is to look for terms that don't exist in English. If every Spanish term has an obvious English twin, the plan was translated.
When does Catalan matter, and when doesn't it?
Catalan matters when the buyer is choosing a local supplier in Catalonia, when the buyer is a public body, and when your brand is trying to signal that it's part of the place rather than passing through. Local services in Barcelona, anything that touches the Generalitat or the city councils, and consumer brands with a shop in the city all fall into that group.
It matters much less for B2B SaaS and for most professional services selling nationally. A large share of Catalan speakers search commercial and technical terms in Spanish, and the volume in Catalan for a term like "software de gestión de proyectos" is a fraction of the Castilian volume. We looked at exactly this for a client with a Barcelona office. Before building anything, I wanted to verify it in Search Console rather than assume. The Catalan queries were there, but they were almost all brand and address lookups. We built one Catalan contact and location page, kept the product content in Spanish, and moved on.
The test fits on one line: would a Spanish-only site undersell you to a Catalan buyer? If yes, build Catalan for that use. If no, don't add a third thin variant to maintain.
What should Spanish content sound like?
Tone decides whether a Spanish buyer trusts the page enough to enquire. Two decisions do most of the work.
The first is tú against usted. Tech, ecommerce, marketing tools and most consumer brands address the reader as tú, and usted reads as stiff. Legal, tax, finance, insurance, healthcare and anything aimed at a public body use usted, and tú reads as unserious. Pick one per site section, write it into the style guide, and don't let a mixed page through. A mismatch shows up in enquiry rate.
The second is claim style. Spanish business writing makes claims less directly than American English and a little less directly than British English. "The best CRM for recruitment" translated literally sounds like a boast. "Un CRM pensado para consultoras de selección" says the same thing in a register that lands. This is where a native editor earns their fee: not grammar, which the tools now handle, but how confidently the page speaks.
On production: machine draft, native edit, one named person accountable for whether the page reads like a Spanish company wrote it. The draft can come from anywhere. The edit can't.
How do you measure Spanish SEO separately?
Search Console is the tool. If Spanish lives on a subfolder, keep one property and filter by country (Spain) and by page path (/es/). If it's on a subdomain or a .es domain, it gets its own property. The monthly view we run has three lines: impressions and clicks for Spain on the Spanish pages, impressions and clicks for Spain on the English pages, and the queries where both an English and a Spanish URL earn impressions. That third list is the cannibalisation queue. It's usually short, and it's the one that catches a Spanish page too thin to be preferred.
The number that goes to the board is Spanish-origin pipeline, not Spanish sessions. If the enquiry form doesn't capture language or country, fix that in week one. It's a five-minute change, and without it you'll never be able to say what Spain is worth.
One reassurance: if the English site already ranks in Spain for a few terms, and it usually does, that's a floor, not a fluke. The Spanish work builds on that authority rather than starting from zero.
Can you just translate the English site?
You can, and it's the most common first move because it's the easiest to buy: one quote, one project, done. In our experience it stalls, for a reason that has nothing to do with translation quality. The pages target the English intent map, and the Spanish demand sits slightly to one side of it. The site ends up with fifty Spanish pages that each rank for something adjacent to what people search, and the conclusion drawn is that Spain doesn't work.
The cheaper order is to research first and translate second. Run the five-step keyword process above on the ten or fifteen commercial pages that earn pipeline in English. Build those Spanish pages against the validated terms, drafting from the English where the intent matches and writing fresh where it doesn't. Leave the blog in English until the commercial pages are earning. That's a fraction of a full-site translation budget, and it tells you inside two quarters whether Spain is a market or a hope.
Sequence follows the buyer. If your buyers in Spain are international teams, startups and relocated professionals, English-first is right and the Spanish work can wait; our market entry playbook for Spain sets out that sequence. If your buyers are domestic Spanish businesses or Spanish consumers, English gets you very little and Spanish is the first job.
Questions we get asked
Do you do SEO for Spanish websites?
Yes, and the part we insist on doing natively is the research and the edit. Strategy happens in English with your team; the Spanish keyword work, the page briefs and the final edit are done by native speakers on the ground. That split is deliberate.
How do you do SEO in Spanish if no one on our team speaks it?
You brief in English and check in English. The five-step method above produces a scored sheet with the English intent alongside each Spanish cluster, so you can see what each page is for without reading the Spanish. For judging copy, ask a native-speaking customer to read one page cold.
Is Google the main search engine in Spain?
Yes, at about 95% of searches. Bing and Yahoo share most of the remainder. Plan for google.es and nothing else.
Do we need Catalan pages for Barcelona?
For local services, public sector work or a physical presence in the city, usually yes, at least for the location and contact pages. For B2B software or national professional services, usually no, because most of that demand is searched in Spanish. Check Search Console for Catalan queries before deciding either way.
Can we just translate our English pages?
As a draft, yes. As the plan, no. Research the Spanish terms first, then draft from the English where the intent matches and write fresh where it doesn't. Translating without research is how a site ends up ranking for things no one buys.
Should Spanish content be on a subfolder or a separate site?
A subfolder on your existing domain, almost always, because it inherits the authority you've already built and costs the least to run. A .es domain only makes sense once the Spanish operation is a business in its own right. The full reasoning, plus the hreflang setup that connects the versions, is in the multilingual guide linked above.
Where we fit
We run international SEO for English-speaking B2B and ecommerce brands selling into Spain, with a senior specialist on the ground in Barcelona and the UK team behind them. The strategy conversation happens in your language; the keyword research and the editing happen in the buyer's. For Myagi, a SaaS platform with teams across Barcelona, the UK and the US, that approach delivered 72% more organic sessions and 38% more qualified organic leads.
If you've got a Spanish keyword list or a translation quote on your desk and want a second opinion on whether it was researched or translated, send it over. We'll tell you what we'd keep and what we'd redo, and why.
