Rules
Bill 96 and French-language SEO compliance for Quebec businesses
Bill 96 French SEO compliance means French first: OQLF rules on metadata, menus and alt text, plus how Quebec search results split by language.
What to take away
- Bill 96 French SEO compliance starts with one rule: French must be available and at least as prominent as English on commercial sites serving Quebec.
- The Charter of the French Language, updated by Bill 96, gives the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) more reach into menus, metadata and alt text.
- French metadata is not decoration. Titles, descriptions and headings in French are what Quebecers see in French-language results.
- Quebecers search in both languages, but French queries behave differently: accents, spacing and local vocabulary change what ranks.
- Your Quebec Enterprise Number (NEQ) is a trust signal you can cite on site, and it is free to look up.
- A short checklist and a documented review cycle do more than a one-time translation pass.
What the Charter of the French Language requires of commercial websites
The Charter of the French Language is Quebec's language law, first passed in 1977 as Bill 101. It sets French as the normal language of commerce, work and public signage in the province.
For a business owner, the practical effect is that a customer in Quebec should be able to buy from you, and understand what they are buying, in French.
Bill 96 is the 2022 reform that widened those obligations. It extended language duties to more businesses, tightened rules on contracts and client communication, and gave the OQLF stronger tools to investigate and penalize.
The Charter of the French Language - Wikipedia entry is a reasonable starting point for the history if you need to brief a client or a developer.
For websites, the core requirement is not that every page be French only. It is that French is present, accessible and not treated as an afterthought. A Quebec visitor should not have to hunt for a language toggle, and the French version should not be a machine-translated stub with three sentences and a contact form.
Commercial sites that offer products or services to Quebec consumers fall in scope. So do many B2B sites, because the law covers the language of commerce broadly, not just retail. If you sell into Quebec from Ontario, British Columbia or Alberta, the obligation can still follow the customer, not your head office.
Where teams get caught is inconsistency. The homepage is translated. The blog is not. The checkout is English only. The OQLF looks at the customer experience as a whole, and gaps are what draw attention. Treat French as a first-class locale in your content plan, not a translation project bolted on at the end.
Bill 96 changes the OQLF can enforce on metadata and menus
Metadata sits in a grey zone that Bill 96 pushed toward the light. Page titles, meta descriptions, navigation labels and button text are all customer-facing language. If a Quebec user sees them in English only, that is a language-of-commerce question, not just an SEO question.
The OQLF can ask a business to demonstrate that French is offered and that the French version is equivalent. In practice that means your French title tag should describe the same page as the English one, not a shortened or vague variant.
The same goes for menu items: "Shop" and "Boutique" should lead to the same place with the same content.
Menus and interface strings are the most common failure point. A translated catalogue with an English-only mega menu still reads as an English site with French product pages. Audit the chrome around your content: header, footer, filters, form labels, error messages and transactional emails.
Enforcement usually starts with a complaint or a spot check. The OQLF can request information, issue notices and, in serious or repeated cases, pursue penalties. Most businesses never reach that stage, because the fix is cheaper than the fight. Document what you did and when, and keep that record.
This is also where your keyword research work and your compliance work overlap. A French title tag that satisfies the OQLF is also the title tag Google will show to French-speaking searchers in Montreal and Quebec City. One artifact, two jobs.
French keyword research for Quebec search behaviour
French keyword research in Quebec is not a translation exercise. Direct translations of English keywords often miss the terms people actually type. Québécois search vocabulary has its own preferences, and some English loanwords rank better than their official French equivalents.
Start with seed terms in French, then expand with accent-aware tools. Accents matter: "depanneur" and "dépanneur" are not the same query string, and Google handles them differently depending on context. Build a list that includes both accented and unaccented forms, then let search console data tell you which one your audience uses.
Watch for vocabulary splits. A term that is standard in France may be rare in Quebec, and the reverse is also true. Local usage wins. If you are unsure, look at the French pages already ranking for your head terms and borrow their phrasing rather than inventing a translation.
Run the same discipline you would for English, using an ai search optimization checklist so nothing is skipped: intent, volume, difficulty, SERP features and seasonality. Add a language dimension to each row. A keyword can be strong in English and weak in French for the same product.
Statistics Canada's Census language data helps you size the opportunity by language and region. It will not give you keyword volumes, but it tells you how many people in a given area speak French at home, which is a useful sanity check before you commit budget to a full French content build.
What Quebecers actually see in French versus English results
French versus English SERP behaviour in Quebec is real and measurable. A bilingual user may search in English and get a mix of English and French results, or search in French and get almost entirely French results. Google leans on the query language, the interface language and the user's location.
That means the same business can rank well in one language and be invisible in the other. If your French pages are thin, Google has little to show a French query, so it falls back to your English pages or to a competitor's French content. Neither outcome is good for you.
Local intent adds another layer. Searches for services near a user often surface Google Business Profile results, and those profiles carry their own language signals. Managing bilingual listings properly, with French categories, descriptions and service names, affects what shows in the map pack for French queries.
Location matters too. A searcher in Montreal sees a different mix than one in Gatineau or Saguenay. If your enterprise seo data is inconsistent across pages and profiles, you weaken the geographic signals that decide which local results appear.
Do not assume a French page will simply inherit your English rankings. It will not. French pages compete in a smaller, separate index of relevant documents, and the winners are usually the sites that built French content deliberately rather than translating at the end of a project.
Metadata, alt text, and structured data in French
French metadata Quebec businesses get wrong most often: title tags that are direct translations with the keyword order reversed, descriptions that are truncated mid-sentence, and alt text left in English because nobody owned it.
Titles should be written in French, not converted. Put the French keyword near the front, keep the brand at the end, and respect the pixel limit rather than a character count. A title that reads naturally in French will earn more clicks than a literal translation of a good English one.
Alt text is a compliance and accessibility item at once. Describe the image in French, briefly and accurately. Decorative images get empty alt attributes. Product images need the product name as it appears in your French catalogue, not an internal SKU.
Structured data needs the same care. If you use Product, LocalBusiness or FAQ markup, the values inside should match the language of the page. Mixing an English product name into a French Product schema confuses both Google and a human reviewer. Keep names, descriptions and FAQ answers in the page's language.
Hreflang is how you tell Google which language version to serve. Get the pairing right, and keep the French and English URLs reciprocal. The mechanics are covered in detail in our guide to French pages, hreflang, which is worth reading before you touch your sitemap.
| Element | English version | French version | Common error |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title tag | Keyword first, brand last | French keyword first, brand last | Literal translation, reversed word order |
| Meta description | Benefit plus call to action | Same promise, French phrasing | Truncated or machine output |
| Alt text | Descriptive, specific | Same description in French | Left in English |
| Structured data | English names and answers | French names and answers | Mixed-language fields |
| Hreflang | en-CA paired with fr-CA | fr-CA paired with en-CA | One-way or missing return tag |
Registering and citing your Quebec Enterprise Number on site
Your Quebec Enterprise Number (NEQ) is a ten-digit identifier the province assigns when you register a business. It is the number the Registraire des entreprises uses to track your file, and it appears on your registration documents. The government explains it plainly in its page on the Québec Enterprise Number (NEQ).
Citing the NEQ on your site is not a legal requirement for every business, but it is a trust signal. Quebec customers, suppliers and partners use it to confirm you are a registered entity. Putting it in your footer, your about page or your legal notice makes you verifiable in one step.
It also helps your own research. Before you write about a competitor or a partner, you can check their registration status through the province's enterprise register search. That is useful for market research, supplier vetting and building accurate comparison content.
For broader context on registering, filing and operating in the province, the government's business portal collects the main services in one place. Bookmark it if you handle compliance tasks alongside marketing.
One caution: do not invent or guess an NEQ for schema markup. If you include it, use the real number from your registration documents, and keep it consistent everywhere it appears.
A compliance checklist before an OQLF complaint arrives
Work through this in order, and keep a dated record of each step. The record is what you show if anyone asks.
- Inventory every customer-facing surface: pages, menus, forms, emails, error messages and checkout.
- Confirm French is available and at least as prominent as English on each surface.
- Review French metadata: titles, descriptions, headings and alt text, page by page.
- Check structured data fields for mixed-language values.
- Verify hreflang pairs are reciprocal and point to live URLs.
- Confirm your NEQ and legal notices are accurate and current.
- Set a review cycle, quarterly at minimum, and log changes.
- French version exists for every page that has an English version
- Language toggle is visible without scrolling on mobile
- French title tags and meta descriptions written, not machine translated
- Alt text in French on all meaningful images
- Menu, filter and form labels translated
- Hreflang return tags in place for fr-CA and en-CA
- NEQ and legal notice accurate on site
Worked example: a Montreal clinic with an English-only booking flow
A Montreal clinic has a bilingual website. Pages are translated. The booking flow, however, is a third-party widget in English only. A French-speaking patient can read about the service in French, then hits an English form to book.
That gap is the kind of thing a complaint targets. The fix has three parts: ask the vendor for a French locale, or replace the widget; add French labels to the embedded form if the vendor supports overrides; and document the change with a date.
While the vendor work is pending, add a short French note above the form explaining the next step, and offer a phone number. It does not fully solve the issue, but it shows French is being offered, and it gives the patient a path that works.
Common questions
Does Bill 96 apply to a website run from outside Quebec? It can, if you offer goods or services to Quebec consumers. The law follows the customer and the market, not the location of your server or head office.
Do I need to translate every blog post? No blanket rule requires it. Prioritise pages that support a commercial transaction or a client relationship, and be consistent about what you leave untranslated.
Can I use machine translation for French metadata? You can start there, but review every title and description by hand. Machine output often misses Quebec vocabulary and reads awkwardly in search results.
What happens if the OQLF receives a complaint about my site? Expect a request for information and a chance to correct the issue. Penalties tend to follow repeated or serious non-compliance, not a first contact.
Is an NEQ required to rank in Quebec? No. It is a trust and verification signal, not a ranking requirement. Include it accurately if you have one.
Should French pages target fr-CA or fr-FR? Use fr-CA. Quebec French differs from France French in vocabulary, and the regional tag helps Google serve the right version to the right audience.
