Site with multiple languages
-
We are building a Joomla site for a customer that has an USA division and a South American division (english and spanish). The products and services are the same.
I am trying to understand the best posible way to architect the site.
1- Do I create 1 site with duplicate pages in different languages? Does Google recognize that it is duplicate content if different languages are used?
2- Do I create seperate sub domains for each language?
3- Should I just use Google translate to translate the pages as required? The problem here is that each site has a different geographic target.
any other alternatives?
-
Hi there,
Great comments.
What language would/should you use for the homepage? And for what reason?
I mean many visitors will probably visit the site through the homepage regardless of their language..
I guess it won't be an option to show them their preferred language on the homepage (usability and conversion issues is what I have in mind also)
Cheers,
Christian
-
As I stated, make sure to use a proper translation service in your efforts, and not any automated translation. They never really get tone, punctuality, etc etc right in native languages (in my book/rant above)
As well - make sure to ADD the Meta feature on each of your pages in the sub-folder (or subdomains) you use like -
And you can use this link resource to find the language code for this feature.
[http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language](Meta Language Tags "http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language")
-
For me the translation is the easy part. I just need to make sure that I am architecting the system the best way possible from the start. would hate to have to come back and decide to change it all up because I didnt think of something.
thanks for your comments!
-
Dan - great shout on using a proper translator rather than Google translate
-
I'm not a big fan of breaking language sites into sub-domains because you break the value of the link structure and link juice in the domain. So for every single language you break out into a sub-domain - you then end up having to build more links to the sub-domains.
Each SEO is different and has difference experience, tactics and strategy from testing and previous work on sites. Sub-folders have been more successful for me in work than sub-domains in terms of rankings and language (MSEO) techniques.
Cheers! Rob
-
Hi Brant,
What you are talking about is Multilingual SEO processes. There are a few ways you can go about doing this.
You can either go with:
A) go with the following setups for the domain with regards to the site URL/sub-folder structure.
www.mysite.com (english)
www.mysite.com/sp/ (spanish)
www.mysite.com/fr/ (french)
www.mysite.com/de/ (german)
etc, etc, etc..
Or:
B) Or, you can also go the route of picking up the same domains name with needed country level extensions that are part of that country (like .ca for canada, .de for germany, .com for USA) etc, etc.
I prefer option A for many reasons, but everyone has their preferences
If you go with A. Keep the domain setup the same and build /folders/ with duplicates of the site pages that are target focused in the target language.
If you go the route of using sub-folders - you will need to inquire about setting up geo-location services at the domain/hosting level (through IP detection)
If going with the sub-folders - don't forget (from a user and experience perspective) on the site to make sure to allow users to 'choose' which element/language manually from the sites' homepage, if offering more than 1-2 languages (expansion) if you go to 3-4 or 5 versions.
This process is very intensive, and needs to be done carefully. You want to use professional services for translation, as Google Translate, or other online services aren't always accurate in sentence structure.Google does not recommend automatic translations.
If you go this route, you will also need to redo a complete KW audit from a search engine optimization perspective, so you have the RIGHT keywords that people use for that market (products), in their own languages. English isn't always a market parallel when languages are involved. Keyword translation is very important here to be successul with customers and target search.
** Using sub-domains can also be done - but sub-domains are considered to be independent domains by Google and therefore don't pass link juice' and value for inbound links across the whole site. Sub folder structures are best for allowing link 'juice' from link building effort' to be passed to the entire site.
If you go with A) - because you are using /folders/ for each of the domains you want to target for each users language. This type of setup is less expensive as well (cost of purchasing more domains, hosting etc)
Try to avoid using geo-location at the hosting level (from an IP address perspective) as it isn't always the best option for your user experience. Giving users the option to choose the language they want to use/see. Allowing users to choose the language they want to view the site in, will help them. Just becuase someone visits a site from the U.S - doesn't mean they are English (they could be Spanish, Chinese, Russian etc) and want the option to choose the language of the site you are promoting.
Remember to use UTF8 for non english language character encoding (on pages, URL's etc)
Presenting sites in multiple languages isn't 'duplicate content' when breaking it out into various /folders and then languages.
*** This is also great user experience and if done properly can help you retain the visitor and convert them into a customer/client as you have taken the time to build out information in their native tongue.
A couple of good articles on MSEO (Multilingual SEO) to help you along. With this, you could probably dig for more information too.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multilingual-seo/19903/
Sorry for the long book of information and links! Ideas just kept coming to me while I was writing!
Cheers, Rob
-
Hey Brant!
I'd go with the sub-domain route like es.yoursits.com and have the Spanish pages right there. In my experience, I've created multi-language sites and not run into duplicate content issues.
Secondly, Google translate does a kind of dictionary translation that may not read so well by your target audience. If at all possible, find someone who can translate the pages for you. Spanish is a common language so you may know someone who can do that for you. If this isn't the case, you could try the url below, I've used this provider before and had good results. May not be viable if you have a lot of text to translate though.
http://fiverr.com/newwealth/do-small-english-to-spanish-translations
Hope this helps,
Dan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How should I handle hreflang tags if it's the same language in all targeting countries?
My company is creating an international version of our site at international.example.com. We are located in the US with our main site at www.example.com targeting US & Canada but offering slightly different products elsewhere internationally. Ideally, we would have hreflang tags for different versions in different languages, however, it's going to be an almost duplicate site besides a few different SKUs. All language and content on the site is going to be in English. Again, the only content changing is slightly different SKUs, they are almost identical sites. The subdomain is our only option right now. Should we implement hreflang tags even if both languages are English and only some of the content is different? Or will having just canonicals be fine? How should we handle this? Would it make sense to use hreflang this way and include it on both versions? I believe this would be signaling for US & Canda visitors to visit our main site and all other users go to the international site. Am I thinking this correctly or should we be doing this a different way?
International SEO | | tcope250 -
Using .ag for agriculture site with global targeting
Would using .ag with a short punchy domain like farm.ag, that was targeting a global audience be a wise decision? Versus say an 11 character descriptive ".com". Is there any benefit to using a ".ag" if the site is for agriculture? Note, this is a heavy content site so SEO important, with plans to serve different languages later.
International SEO | | mag7770 -
.fr Site Not Indexed in Search Console
Hey everyone, I am just now learning international SEO, and so appreciate any and all help! 1. I added supershuttle.fr to Search Console about a week ago and it still has 0 indexed pages. It is showing that pages were indexed in the sitemap, and when I check, there are 75 results in Google. Is this something I should be concerned with? Is there a setting that I'm not aware of in Search Console that I need to change? 2. Also, I read the below regarding the automatically translated pages. Would https://en.supershuttle.fr/ be considered an "automatically translated" page? Use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling automatically translated pages on your site. Automated translations don’t always make sense and could be viewed as spam. More importantly, a poor or artificial-sounding translation can harm your site’s perception
International SEO | | SuperShuttle0 -
Footer pages on international sites
Hi guys, i have a question about footer indexed pages like about us, frequently questions, press or ads with us, among others. I'd like to put the same page in our website of .com.mx but i don't know how because i think it will be duplicate content. should i create new content for these pages? Thanks, J
International SEO | | pompero990 -
Canonical and hreflang mess of international desktop and mobile site versions
Hello, I have an interesting case and I am lost in it. There are two versions of the site: desktop and mobile. And there are also international versions: English and Spanish. I'm stuck at implementation of canonical tags. Currently my setup has the following: English (default) desktop page has these: English Mobile page has these: Spanish Desktop version: Spanish Mobile version: But I somewhat feel that I messed the things... Could you guys point me to what I did wrong and explain how to set it right? Also, if you know URLs of blog posts or articles, where similar case is explained - share with me please.
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
How to handle rel canonical on secondary TLD's - multi regional sites.
I currently have a .com domain which I am think of duplicating the content on to another tld, CO.UK (and regionalize some aspects like contact numbers etc). From my research, it seems that in gwt you must then indicate which country you wish to target, in the co.uk case the UK. My question is how should I handle rel canonical in the duplicated site. should it rel canonical back to the .com or the co.uk? Any other pointers would also be appreciated. Thx
International SEO | | dmccarthy0 -
Why is GoogleBot crawling our German site and rendering it in English.
We have a German website at (http://de.pa.com) and we can't get the search engines to index the site in German language. For some reason the GoogleBot, BingBot, etc are crawling de.pa.com and displaying English text on the SERP. I've tried testing via web-sniffer.net and Google Webmaster tools which both are crawling de.pa.com in English. We know the page titles/meta descriptions are in English which we are updating to German, but I'm curious to why search engines are indexing our German site and displaying on the SERP as English text when the entire content of the site is in German. Thank you, Brian
International SEO | | Liamis0 -
My site is not showing on google.com ?
My website is not showing at all on google.com searches under search terms. It is showing if i search for my domain (xyz.com) but not by keywords. Searching by keywords and search terms shows my website on yahoo , bing and non US oogle as google.co.uk or google.com.pk on first page. Would appreciate any help in trying to understand why this is happening? The website is medicare.md. if you search for term "medicare doctors PG county maryland" it is #1 in bing and yahoo but not even showing on google.com first TEN pages, although not banned. Interestingly if you do that search on google.co.pk it is #4. Quite Puzzuling !! Would appreciate any help or advice . Sherif Hassan
International SEO | | sherohass0