If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?

[Designworks-SJ]

I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?

[Highland]

In most cases, no. I would still add language tags to your site, but Google tends to view different language sites as localized to that language.

[Dalerio-Consulting]

It is actually a good idea to split the two language versions into two different sites as it will help each of the sites rank in their own countries. It's an even better idea to use country-specific domains for that.

To make things clear, translated content is not duplicate content. The search engines have no incentive to penalize sites for translating their content, so you would be safe from any filter that search engines might use.

However, you are advised to use hreflang when linking to the different language versions of the site to let the search engines know that both sites are linked together, as it would help search engines provide the correct language version of the site to targeted users.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com