Saadiyat Marina — Bilingual Property Publication

Context

German-speaking buyers researching Abu Dhabi property. German serves at /, English at /en/. Many readers browse from the UAE, so language can't be guessed from location.

Constraints

• Both languages must be indexed separately by Google
• Editorial rules: no unofficial pricing; prices only where a release is verified
• Tight timeline — launched in 7 working days

System design

            Request
               │
     ┌─────────▼──────────┐
     │  middleware.ts     │  acts on "/" only:
     │  sm_lang cookie?   │  en → 302 /en/ ; else German
     └─────────┬──────────┘
               │
   ┌───────────▼────────────┐        ┌──────────────────────┐
   │ app/(de)/…  app/(en)/en│◄───────│ content/*.ts  (DE+EN │
   │ one View per page type │        │ copy, typed)         │
   └───────────┬────────────┘        │ data/*.json (projects│
               │                     │ market, sources)     │
   ┌───────────▼────────────┐        └──────────────────────┘
   │ lib/seo                │
   │  routes.ts  URL contract (DE⇄EN pairs)
   │  metadata.ts canonical + hreflang + OG
   │  schema.ts  JSON-LD graph
   │  definePageSeo() → { metadata, graph }
   └───────────┬────────────┘
               ▼
   sitemap.xml (with xhtml:link alternates) · robots.txt · /og image route
               │
   api/enquiry → validation + honeypot → email / CRM webhook

Key decisions

• One descriptor per page returns both head metadata and JSON-LD, so they cannot disagree.
• No Accept-Language redirect. It was the reason /en/ wasn't indexing: Googlebot sends that header, so / redirected to /en/ on crawls and the hreflang cluster contradicted itself. Replaced with an explicit cookie set by the language switch.
• 302, not 301, for the language redirect — browsers cache 301s forever, trapping users who switch back.
• No IP geolocation — it would serve English to exactly the German readers in the UAE.
• Editorial rules enforced in code, not just documented.

Results

• Complete de / en / x-default hreflang on all 54 URLs
• 36-project catalogue with Residence, ItemList, FAQPage, Article and BreadcrumbList structured data
• Generated Open Graph images per page
• Live on Vercel; delivered for the Dubai Haus group through KohzadTech