Could multiple languagues on one site be bad for SEO???
-
Our site is has content in English and in Spanish. The spanish side was translated by me, Spanish is my first language, so i know that the translations are good and its original content. We were Pandalized/Penguinnized pretty bad earlier this year. We have completely cleaned our site of anything that could be considered thin content or grey hat techniques. An associate is telling me that we need to put the spanish version of the site on its own domain, does this make sense to anyone?
The spanish side of the site gets only about 5% of the visitors, bu i still don't see the logic in taking all those pages and putting them on a different domain. Would this help recover from Panda/Penguin.
Thanks
-
Hi!
I don't know why my fellow associate here is saying you have to put your spanish version of the site in a separate domain. The ideal should be for us to have a look to your site in order to judge and really try helping you.
In general, a multilingual site - if everything (paginations, faceted navigations, thin content, duplicated and substantially duplicated content) is fine - should not have problem just because it is multilingual.
The only reasons why we can see duplicated content across all languages is when, for instance, not everything has been translated in spanish. A classic can be the news or blog posts, which maybe the site produce just in english but present in every language mirror and the site has such a bad arquitecture to present URLs like these:
where post.html is actually the same post but URL duplicated 3 times.
But, apart those cases (quite extreme, even though - I assure you - existing), a multilingual site per se is not a reason for a Panda penalization.
Penguin, than, is all about links, so - again - I don't see a causation or correlation between multilingual site and Penguin. I mean... if a multilingual site has been hit by Penguin is not because its multilingual, but because it has an anchor text overoptimized link profile.
Then... a subcarpet or an external domain? It depends from your marketing needs. If you are thinking to expand strongly in a foreign market, somehow to make it a distinct entity respect the original one, then to create a new site in a new domain name (generic if you target a language, cTld if you target a country) is maybe the best choice.
But in your case the choice to have it inside your main domain seems ok to me.
Finally, to make things clear. If multilingual site was a problem, surely Google would have started deprecating its use (and it is not doing that, all the contrary) and Brands like Apple would not create their site using that style (try to go to www.apple.es and see what happen...)
-
Do you know of someone who has done a case study on this that I can look over? I appreciate your input and would like to verify it.
-
hi.
your second statement is good only if you want to target Spain as country, not spanish speaking people all over the world, as .es is countrg level termination, hence automatically geotarget Spain. Also from an user point of view, if your target in not only the Spanish people, is not a good idea, because Mexican or people from Latin America will not probably click on that domain, but yes to .mx and so on.
Also you first assumption is not correct. Google don't consider translations as duplicated content, because they aren't. The only problem translation may have is they are of content not yours and you don't attribute the copyright of the content with a link to the original source (aka: you try to make looking like it was created by you).
-
It absolutely makes sense!
Why?
Google is great at picking up on duplicate content, even if it's in another language.
Benefits of separating:
Register with a .es domain name and you can geo-target spanish speaking clients easier.
No duplicate content penalties.
Increased, targeted traffic = better conversions (more sales)How?
Just use the same design/structure for your new site
301 the old pages to their new locationsCost?
Low if you use the same design
Have to pay your SEO for the work -
Well, could you do a sub-domain on your existing website ? How do you have then structured in your website right now ? Is it easy to detect, something like yourdomain.com/en, yourdomain.com/es ?
If I were you, I would check to see evidence that the spanish translation of your website living under the same domain indeed caused the penalty.
-
It does make a small amount of sense if you were targeting spain as a country (so a country based domain)
Translations should be fine on the same site- The best fix I can think of is to make sure the information on the spanish side (since you have created it 100% orginal) doesn't cover the exact same subjects.
At 5% traffic it doesn't make time/economical sense to create a whole new site (a question has to be asked around amount of income/sales from the 5%)
Hope that helps
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | | Breemcc0 -
Unsolved URL dynamic structure issue for new global site where I will redirect multiple well-working sites.
Dear all, We are working on a new platform called [https://www.piktalent.com](link url), were basically we aim to redirect many smaller sites we have with quite a lot of SEO traffic related to internships. Our previous sites are some like www.spain-internship.com, www.europe-internship.com and other similars we have (around 9). Our idea is to smoothly redirect a bit by a bit many of the sites to this new platform which is a custom made site in python and node, much more scalable and willing to develop app, etc etc etc...to become a bigger platform. For the new site, we decided to create 3 areas for the main content: piktalent.com/opportunities (all the vacancies) , piktalent.com/internships and piktalent.com/jobs so we can categorize the different types of pages and things we have and under opportunities we have all the vacancies. The problem comes with the site when we generate the diferent static landings and dynamic searches. We have static landing pages generated like www.piktalent.com/internships/madrid but dynamically it also generates www.piktalent.com/opportunities?search=madrid. Also, most of the searches will generate that type of urls, not following the structure of Domain name / type of vacancy/ city / name of the vacancy following the dynamic search structure. I have been thinking 2 potential solutions for this, either applying canonicals, or adding the suffix in webmasters as non index.... but... What do you think is the right approach for this? I am worried about potential duplicate content and conflicts between static content dynamic one. My CTO insists that the dynamic has to be like that but.... I am not 100% sure. Someone can provide input on this? Is there a way to block the dynamic urls generated? Someone with a similar experience? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Jose_jimenez0 -
Site Migration from One Dev. and Server to Another Dev. and Server
Hi Mozzers! I've got a client that is in the early stages of moving the development of their site to another company and therefore, a new server. The site is very large and the migration will take place over 18 months. In the beginning, smaller chunks of the site will be moved, and as that process gets dialed in, larger portions will migrate. It was brought to our attention today that they (on either side of development) have not yet worked out the logistics of keeping the domain and URL structure consistent throughout the migration. The initial proposal was that they publish newly migrated pages to a subdomain, which we obviously want to steer away from. I'm now on a mission to find a solution that will make everyone happy; client, old dev, new dev, and us (as the SEO partner). Does anyone have experience in managing SEO through a migration such as this?
Technical SEO | | LoganRay0 -
Are sitewide links bad for SEO?
I have 11 real estate sites and have had links from one to another for about 7 years but someone just suggested me to take them all out because I might get penalized or affected by penguin. My main site was affected on July of 2012 and organic visits have dropped 43%...I've been working on many aspects of my SEO but it's been difficult to come back. Any suggestions are very welcome, thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | mbulox0 -
SEO URLs?
What are the best practices for generating SEO-friendly headlines? dashes between words? underscores between words? etc. Looking for a programatically generated solution that's using editor-written headlines to produce an SEO-friendly URL Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ShaneHolladay0 -
Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?
A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0