Bi-Lingual Site: Lack of Translated Content & Duplicate Content
-
One of our clients has a blog with an English and Spanish version of every blog post. It's in WordPress and we're using the Q-Translate plugin.
The problem is that my company is publishing blog posts in English only. The client is then responsible for having the piece translated, at which point we can add the translation to the blog.
So the process is working like this:
-
We add the post in English.
-
We literally copy the exact same English content to the Spanish version, to serve as a placeholder until it's translated by the client. (*Question on this below)
-
We give the Spanish page a placeholder title tag, so at least the title tags will not be duplicate in the mean time.
-
We publish. Two pages go live with the exact same content and different title tags.
-
A week or more later, we get the translated version of the post, and add that as the Spanish version, updating the content, links, and meta data.
Our posts typically get indexed very quickly, so I'm worried that this is creating a duplicate content issue. What do you think?
What we're noticing is that growth in search traffic is much flatter than it usually is after the first month of a new client blog.
I'm looking for any suggestions and advice to make this process more successful for the client.
*Would it be better to leave the Spanish page blank? Or add a sentence like: "This post is only available in English" with a link to the English version?
Additionally, if you know of a relatively inexpensive but high-quality translation service that can turn these translations around quicker than my client can, I would love to hear about it.
Thanks!
David
-
-
Not knowing the nature of the blog, so mine is simply a "common sense" suggestion:
would not be possible to schedule the posts with few days of anticipation respect the day of their previewed publication, so to to have them translated and so publish both the English and Spanish version at the same time?
Or... isn't it possible for you to take care of the translation of the posts.
Finally... if nothing of these solutions are possible, then I suggest you to put as canonical URL of the Spanish version the URL of the English one, at least until the translated version is not ready. Doing so you won't have any duplicate content issue.
-
Thanks for the response.
The Spanish page is automatically created when the post is published. There's no way around that.
I agree with your point though. Unless someone has a better suggestion, we'll start adding "this post is only available in English," or something along those lines...in Spanish, of course
Thanks!
-
"What we're noticing is that growth in search traffic is much flatter than it usually is after the first month of a new client blog."
Given that you are already seeing less progress than what you are used to I would go ahead and put something else on the Spanish page until the content is translated.
Even better would be not to release the Spanish page until it's ready, is that an option you have?
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
-
Duplicate content hidden behind tabs
Just looking at an ecommerce website and they've hidden their product page's duplicate content behind tabs on the product pages - not on purpose, I might add. Is this a legitimate way to hide duplicate content, now that Google has lowered the importance and crawlability of content hidden behind tabs? Is this a legitimate tactic to tackle duplicate content? Your thoughts would be welcome. Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Duplicate content due to parked domains
I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names. So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs0 -
Handling duplicate content, whilst making both rank well
Hey MOZperts, I run a marketplace called Zibbet.com and we have 1000s of individual stores within our marketplace. We are about to launch a new initiative giving all sellers their own stand-alone websites. URL structure:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | relientmark
Marketplace URL: http://www.zibbet.com/pillowlink
Stand-alone site URL: http://pillowlink.zibbet.com (doesn't work yet) Essentially, their stand-alone website is a duplicate of their marketplace store. Same items (item title, description), same seller bios, same shop introduction content etc but it just has a different layout. You can scroll down and see a preview of the different pages (if that helps you visualize what we're doing), here. My Questions: My desire is for both the sellers marketplace store and their stand-alone website to have good rankings in the SERPS. Is this possible? Do we need to add any tags (e.g. "rel=canonical") to one of these so that we're not penalized for duplicate content? If so, which one? Can we just change the meta data structure of the stand-alone websites to skirt around the duplicate content issue? Keen to hear your thoughts and if you have any suggestions for how we can handle this best. Thanks in advance!0 -
Duplicate content on subdomains
Hi All, The structure of the main website goes by http://abc.com/state/city/publication - We have a partnership with public libraries to give local users access to the publication content for free. We have over 100 subdomains (each for an specific library) that have duplicate content issues with the root domain, Most subdomains have very high page authority (the main public library and other local .gov websites have links to this subdomains).Currently this subdomains are not index due to the robots text file excluding bots from crawling. I am in the process of setting canonical tags on each subdomain and open the robots text file. Should I set the canonical tag on each subdomain (homepage) to the root domain version or to the specific city within the root domain? Example 1:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NewspaperArchive
Option 1: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/california/covina/
Option 2: http://covina.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 2:
Option 1: http://galveston.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/texas/galveston/
Option 2: http://galveston.abc.com = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ Example 3:
Option 1: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/us/kansas/hutchinson/
Option 2: http://hutchnews.abc.com/ = Canonical Tag = http://abc.com/ I believe it makes more sense to set the canonical tag to the corresponding city (option 1), but wondering if setting the canonical tag to the root domain will pass "some link juice" to the root domain and it will be more beneficial. Thanks!0 -
Best strategy for duplicate content?
Hi everyone, We have a site where all product pages have more or less similar text (same printing techniques, etc.) The main differences are prices and images, text is highly similar. We have around 150 products in every language. Moz's algorithm tells me to do something about duplicate content, but I don't really know what we could do, since the descriptions can't be changed to be very different. We essentially have paper bags in different colors and and from different materials.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaanMSonberg0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
How much (%) of the content of a page is considered too much duplication?
Google is not fond of duplication, I have been very kindly told. So how much would you suggest is too much?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonberenyi0 -
Duplicate Content - Panda Question
Question: Will duplicate informational content at the bottom of indexed pages violate the panda update? **Total Page Ratio: ** 1/50 of total pages will have duplicate content at the bottom off the page. For example...on 20 pages in 50 different instances there would be common information on the bottom of a page. (On a total of 1000 pages). Basically I just wanted to add informational data to help clients get a broader perspective on making a decision regarding "specific and unique" information that will be at the top of the page. Content ratio per page? : What percentage of duplicate content is allowed per page before you are dinged or penalized. Thank you, Utah Tiger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0