Are my translated pages damaging my ranking?
-
Hi there,
I have a site in English but with duplicates in different languages.
The first problem is that these translated versions of my site receive no ranking on google stars (while the english does) - why is this?
The second problem is that SEOmoz counts the errors on my site and then duplicates this error count for all the translated versions of my site - meaning I have a huge amount of errors (too many on-page links).
Add this to the fact that I use affilite ID´s to track different types of traffic to my site - so all page urls in english and other languages, with an affiliate id on the end of the url, count as an error.
This means I have a huge amount of on page errors indicated by SEOmoz, plus no ranking for my translated pages - I think this is really harming my overall ranking and site trust.
What are your opinions on this?
-
Is there a subdomain for each language?
Is there a "default" language that exists on the primary domain (i.e. English on www.yourwebsite.com)?
Are you using rel href lang, X-Default Hrefe Lang, rel canonical, or other "tags" or solutions for this at the moment?
If you could share the website address we wouldn't have to ask these questions, by the way. I know that is especially tough on client sites, but I just wanted to say that Dave has asked some vital questions, including the one about setting each subdomain as its own language / geographic target audience. Here is what he is asking about: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399
It is not necessary to have completely unique content for each language, as someone suggested below.
-
Bryan I really don't think that is what Dave is saying.
-
Did you claim the subdomain as a new language in webmaster tools?
-
Hi dave, thanks for your reply.
Our translations across the site are as a subdomain, they are hand-translated
-
What dave is saying is it's better to have unique content for each language because it gets crawled.
-
Do you have the translations on language specific TLDs or as a subfolder or a subdomain on your current site? Is the translation being done by a widget or was the content hand-translated by a professional translator?
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
-
Website relaunched: Both old pages and new pages indexed
Hi all, We have recently made major changes to our website and relaunched it. We have changed URLs of some pages. We have redirected old URLs to new before taking website live. When I check even after one week, still the same old and new pages also indexed at Google. I wonder why still old pages cache is there with Google. Please share your ideas on this. Thanks
International SEO | | vtmoz0 -
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish)
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish). For the user it would be useful to see these reviews but I am concerned about negative SEO impact.
International SEO | | lcourse
I would not want to invest into having them all translated by human translator. Any suggestions?0 -
Best way to improve USA rankings on .co.uk domain?
I have a client with a .co.uk domain. They currently rank #1 in 13 our of 14 keywords for UK. They rank #1 for the majority of the terms in the USA but want to improve on them. What would be the best route?
International SEO | | TomKelly0 -
Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links). Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.". Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text? How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do. Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links. Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings. Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
International SEO | | raido0 -
Suggestion for Baidu Keyword Rank Tracking Software?
Does anyone have a suggestion for the best keyword rank tracking software in Baidu? The keywords would be in Chinese. We currently already have keyword rank tracking software for Google/Bing/Yahoo so we just need to expand to Baidu. I am looking forward to comparing my research with what the Moz community has to say! Thanks!
International SEO | | kchandler0 -
Redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO
Hi,
International SEO | | Awaraman
I have two questions. Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons and how important is it to include keywords to folders and page URLs. Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords? Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I undertstand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate the language versions. My question is regarding the subfolder. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should you also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder. Thanks in advance, Sam0 -
Will changing my host affect my rankings
Were moving our site from a UK server to an Australian server to benefit from hosting our site in our home country. The domain name is the same, the template and files are all the same so will we lose rankings at all when the website is moved? I plan on leaving the old website up there until the new website is cached. What considerations should we think of before we migrate? Cheers
International SEO | | acs1110 -
Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
International SEO | | Francisco_Meza0