Multilingual Ecommerce Product Pages Best Practices
-
Hi Mozzers,
We have a marketplace with 20k+ products, most of which are written in English. At the same time we support several different languages. This changes the chrome of the site (nav, footer, help text, buttons, everything we control) but leaves all the products in their original language.
This resulted in all kinds of duplicate content (pages, titles, descriptions) being detected by SEOMoz and GWT. After doing some research we implemented the on page rel="alternate" hreflang="x", seeing as our situation almost perfectly matched the first use case listed by Google on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077.
This ended up not helping at all. Google still reports duplicate titles and descriptions for thousands of products, months after setting this up. We are thinking about changing to the sitemap implementation rel="alternate" hreflang="X", but are not sure if this will work either. Other options we have considered include noindex or blocks with robots.txt when the product language is not the same as the site language. That way the feature is still open to users while removing the duplicate pages for Google.
So I'm asking for input on best practice for getting Google to correctly recognize one product, with 6 different language views of that same product. Can anyone help?
Examples:
(Site in English, Product in English) http://website.com/products/product-72
(Site in Spanish, Product in English) http://website.com/es/products/product-72
(Site in German, Product in English) http://website.com/de/products/product-72
etc...
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for responding. I took a look at your guide, and I definitely understand the gold standard would be to get everything translated professionally, and provide a completely native experience.
Unfortunately due to our catalog size that would be prohibitively expensive, so I need to think of another solution. It sounds like from your guide that we are doing more harm than good, even with alternate language syntax in place.
Based on your answer, my thought would be to meta noindex any product page where the site language is not the same as the product. That way every page in the index will be 100% localized for potential visitors.
So if its a Spanish product index: site.com/es/product, but meta noindex site.com/de/product, site.com/product, etc.
If we follow that path, does it make sense to remove the alternate language syntax, since all the linked URLs will be no index?
Thanks again for your help.
-
Hi Scott,
sorry to tell you that you're doing International SEO quite bad. No offence, but what you describe is how not to do International SEO.
If you are targeting Spanish end users, you must localize in Spanish everything:
- template elements;
- URLs
- products description
- Titles
- e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g
It is not just a question of SEO, but of usability too. Just revert the situation: what would be your reaction if you enter in a site, click on the english version and everything is written in Spanish?
Obviously, if you have the spanish version of your all in spanish, that will help a lot ranking for spanish queries.
In order to find an answer to your doubts, I warmly suggest you to read this guide to International SEO I wrote here on SEOmoz few time ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-dropping-the-information-dust
Ciao
-
Your answer is conceptually correct, but the implementation not that much.
This kind of URL is not the ideal: http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_spa/treviluxurypenthouse
The best is to put every language mirror of your multilingual site in a subfolder: i.e. /es/ in the above cited case.
Google, in fact, understands better that the /es/, /de/, /fr/ subfolders are targeting Spanish, German and French, as those are the ISO codes for those languages.
The subfolders way, then, is even more suggested if you are targeting a country, because you can geotarget a subfolder in Google Webmasters Tools.
Finally, a warm suggestion: if you really want to be sure to rank in Russia, then you should think about Yandex SEO... which means:
- Having the site in a .ru domain name (Yandex is biased toward russian domain terminations);
- Have the site in russian.. also the URLs (yours is in english)
-
Hi
For me it is wrong to present a product with the navigation in different languages and the description always in English
We work in travel and i want show you how we work with the same apartment
http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments/treviluxurypenthouse english default language
http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_ita/treviluxurypenthouse
http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_spa/treviluxurypenthouse
http://www.rentalinrome.com/fontainedetreviappartements/treviluxurypenthouse
http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_de/treviluxurypenthouse
http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_ru/treviluxurypenthouse
we change all, navigation and content
This is the best way for index the same product in different language avoid duplicate content
Ciao
Maurizio
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
-
Multi Regional Website Best Practices
Hi there, I have a website that is targeting 3 countries AU/US & NZ. I have set up hreflang tags for each page on each of the site however I am having difficulties getting it work right. I read this article which was a great insight into the hreflang tags. https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights and as a result I have implemented hreflang tags in the following manner: When users access the root domain http://[website] it will redirect the user to their locale with a 302 redirect. I have a few questions:
International SEO | | nathanfranklin
1. When building my external link profiles, I'm not sure if I should be building link profiles for http://[website]/ or for the geo graphical pages (http://[website]/aus/ etc..). Note that the http://[website]/ is never used, it just issues a 302 to the actual geographical location. 2. It seems that the hreflang tags are not working correctly. Perhaps its the result of the 302 on the root page, but in google.com.au (using the link http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=au&pws=0&q=[branded search]) I would expect that I should see the search results for /aus/ given the fact that the hreflang tags are setup as en-au. Instead I am seeing the root domain page. Is that correct or should it be showing all the pages with /aus/. ALSO If I do a search in google thailand (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=th&pws=0&q=[branded search]) it returns the /aus/ version where it should be showing the /us/ using the x-default hreflang tag. In google webmaster tools I have setup 4 site profiles:
http://[website]/
http://[website]/us/
http://[website]/aus/ (Targeted to Australia)
http://[website]/nz/ (Targeted to New Zealand) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Nathan1 -
Best practice for Spanish version of English website?
I'm doing an audit for a site that has all of its English pages under the same roof with Spanish pages in Wordpress. It is intended for Chicago, not Mexico. I suspect this is not a good thing, but I only have instinct to rely on here. What is the best practice for having the same website in two languages? http://www.enhancedform.com/ and http://www.enhancedform.com/spanish/
International SEO | | realpatients0 -
Best International Rank Checker?
Anyone have a recommendation for the best international ranking tool. I'm looking to gather accurate ranking trends and am looking for a service that will return rankings in as many localized countries as possible.
International SEO | | marcbn0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
International SEO: best practices for local variants of the same language?
We are translating our site into 17 different languages, including local variants of the same language (i.e. Mexican Spanish and Spain Spanish, Canadian English and British English, etc). Should we add all of these local variants to our site? We don't have the marketing / link building budget (or business need) to put these all on separate ccTLDs, so we are using country-specific subfolders instead (example.com/es/). The translations will be of exceptional quality. Our main goal is to pull in some additional traffic from these translations. If we add these local variants, do you think we can expect to see traffic from these different countries (additional traffic from Canada, England, etc)? Any advice / input would be appreciated.
International SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
International Landing Page Strategy
Hello, I'm looking for some insight in an area that I don't have much experience in - hoping the community can help! We are a healthcare staffing company serving clients in the U.S. (www.bartonassociates.com). We are interested in attracting clients in Australia and New Zealand. I'm wondering if anyone as experience with best practices for doing so (both from an SEO and PPC perspective). Would it be best to purchase .au and .nz domains for these landing pages and link back to our US site for more information (or even recreate a modified version of our US site for .au and .nz). My concern here is duplicate content issues, among other things. Or, would it be better to create Australia and New Zealand focused landing pages on our US site and drive PPC there? My concern here is that we would never get organic traffic from Australia and New Zealand to our US site, in light of the competition. Also, the messaging would be a bit mixed if targeting all three countries. Our core term is "locums" and "locum tenens". Greatly appreciate any insight from you guys. Thanks, Jason
International SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
International (foreign language) URL's best practices
I'm curious if there is a benefit or best practice with regards to using the localized language on international sites (with specific ccTLDs). For example, should my french site (site.fr) use the french language as keywords within the URLs or should they be in english? e.g. www.site.fr/nourriture vs. www.site.fr/food Is that considered best practice for SEO (or just for brand perception those markets?). Is there a tangible loss in SEO if we do not use the correct language for those URLs and just stick with English around the world? I recall seeing a Matt Cutts video on the topic and he said that google does support i18n URL's but other SE's might not support them as gracefully but he didn't come down with a hard recommendation to go with i18n URL's or just English. Would love a strong ruling in favor one direction based on best practices.
International SEO | | mongillo0 -
Country specific landing pages
I have a client who wants to put a re-direct on his landing pages based on the visitors IP address. The landing page will be a sub domain relevant to the country their IP is located in. I am a little concerned this will effect the SEO. Appreciate any advice. Dylan 🙂
International SEO | | gomyseo0