Brazilian Portuguese is the fastest way to lose a Portuguese buyer.
There are far more Portuguese speakers in Brazil, so translation tools, writers and keyword data all drift that way by default. A Portuguese buyer spots it in the first sentence, and the phrases you end up targeting are the ones used four thousand miles away.
Start with the free 15 point site check. Two working days, no call required.
Featured case study
373
products migrated
- 822feed offers, zero errors
- 4.3%conversion rate across all campaigns, Jul to Aug 2026
What is actually different about selling into Portugal
The specifics that change the build, not a list of countries I will work in.
The regulator
The Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados, the CNPD. The GDPR applies in full.
Checkout
Euro. MB Way leads for everyday payments and Multibanco sits underneath it, generating a reference the buyer pays through online banking or at a machine. That is a different checkout flow from a card, not just another button.
The language
European Portuguese. The vocabulary, the verb forms and the search phrases differ from Brazilian Portuguese enough that using the wrong one is both a credibility problem and a targeting problem.
What the site must publish
The Portuguese transposition of the same European provider information duty: identity, establishment, electronic contact details, company registration number and tax number.
What usually goes wrong on a Portuguese site
Brazilian Portuguese on a Portuguese site
Obvious to a local reader in the first paragraph, and worse than obvious in the keyword targeting, because the two markets often use different words for the same thing.
A checkout that assumes a card
Multibanco gives the buyer a reference to pay later, which means the order exists before the money arrives. A checkout and a confirmation flow built only around instant card payment handles that badly.
Keyword data pulled for the wrong country
Research run on Portuguese as a language rather than Portugal as a market, so the volumes are mostly Brazilian and the plan is built on them.
Consent inherited from a template
A banner that looks right and loads analytics before the choice, which is the most common real breach anywhere in Europe.
Not sure which of those it is? Send the web address and the written 15 point check says so in two working days, free.
What the work actually is
The same list whether you are in Portugal or anywhere else I work.
The 15 point technical check
Speed, indexing, structured data, redirects, consent and the rest, written out in the order worth fixing rather than the order a crawler found them.
Pages for what buyers search
Built from real search data in the language your buyers type, not translated from an English page and hoped over.
A redirect map before anything moves
Every old address mapped to a new one and tested before launch, because this is the step that loses rankings when it is skipped.
Tracking that waits for consent
Nothing loads before a choice is made, and the banner says what it does. This is the part regulators are actually acting on.
Google Ads on a flat fee
A fixed monthly amount whatever the spend, so the advice does not get more expensive when the budget does.
Shopify and WooCommerce moves
Products, variants, media and URLs moved with the search positions held, on the same domain where that is possible.
Custom systems when software is the problem
Order flows, stock feeds and internal tools, when the honest answer is that no amount of marketing fixes the process underneath.
Plain monthly notes
What was done, what it changed and what is next, in a page you can read without a glossary.
Want the number first? Every price is published, including the ones I would not charge you.
Two Portugueses, and the one your data is probably in
This is not a stylistic preference. European and Brazilian Portuguese differ in everyday vocabulary, in how verbs are formed, and in the exact phrases people type into a search box. Because Brazil is so much larger, any keyword research run on the language rather than the country comes back dominated by Brazilian volume, and a plan built on it targets phrases Portuguese buyers do not use.
So the research gets scoped to Portugal and the copy gets written in European Portuguese by somebody who speaks it. That one decision does more for a Portuguese site than most of the technical work, because it determines whether the pages are competing for the right phrases at all.
Multibanco changes the checkout, not just the payment
A Multibanco payment produces a reference that the buyer settles afterwards, through their bank or at a machine. That means an order can exist in a paid pending state for hours or days, and the site has to handle it: the confirmation has to explain what happens next, the stock logic has to decide whether to hold the item, and the analytics has to know not to count the sale twice when the money lands.
Shops built for card payment alone tend to get all three wrong at once, which shows up as a conversion rate that looks worse than reality and an order flow that confuses buyers at the last step. It is the kind of problem that is cheap to design in and expensive to retrofit.
A furniture retailer: three storefronts, three ad accounts and a CRM
A Dutch furniture retailer with three brands and a ten to twelve week order cycle, where the online numbers alone made a busy business look like a failing one until the measurement was fixed.
What I will not do
Said before you ask, because it is usually the deciding part.
Promise a position
Nobody controls Google's results, and anyone who promises a ranking is either guessing or lying. I will tell you what is winnable and what is not, with the search data in front of you.
Hold your accounts
Analytics, Search Console and every ad account are registered in your name from day one. If you stop working with me you lose nothing but me.
Bill a percentage of ad spend
A percentage pays me more when you spend more, which is the wrong incentive. Advertising is a flat monthly fee whatever the budget.
Take the work if it is the wrong spend
If the free check says your problem is not a website problem, the report says so and I tell you what would actually move the number.
Rather just ask? One question by email or WhatsApp is fine.
The rest of Western Europe
Neighbouring markets, each with its own regulator, language and checkout.
Every market I work in is listed on where I work, with what differs in each one.
Fair questions before you get in touch
You are not based here. Does that matter?
It has not so far. Everything runs by email and WhatsApp, the accounts are in your name, and the work is the same work wherever it is typed. I am in Pakistan and I say so on every page, because finding that out later is worse than reading it now.
We already have Portuguese content. Is it the right Portuguese?
Often not, and it is quick to tell. The free 15 point check flags it, along with whether the pages are targeting phrases with Portuguese search volume or Brazilian.
Do we need both MB Way and Multibanco?
For Portuguese consumers you want both, and more importantly you want the order flow built for the reference payment rather than bolted on. That is the part that actually goes wrong.
Can you work in Portuguese?
I build the structure, the targeting and the technical work, and a European Portuguese speaker writes the copy. I will not pretend machine translation is good enough here, given the whole problem is the difference between two varieties of the language.
Why are the prices on the website?
Because the alternative is a quote form, and a quote form exists to get you on a call before you know the number. The free 15 point check, the 290 euro audit and the monthly and rebuild prices are all published. You can decide before you ever write to me.
How long before any of this shows up in search?
A new page on a site that already carries some authority can move within weeks. On a site with very few links pointing at it, expect months, and expect the first movement on specific questions rather than on the obvious commercial terms. I will not give you a date, because nobody controls the result. What I will give you is the order of the work and what each step is meant to change.
Send your web address. That is the whole first step.
The written 15 point check comes back within two working days, free. It says what is holding the site back, in the order worth fixing.