Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What SEO considerations for multiple languages on a single page?
-
I am working on a language teaching site for Chinese speakers learning English. I consider myself above average when it comes to basic SEO issues, but all I know here is that Google doesn't like multiple languages on a single page.
Without getting into too many details, both Chinese and English text will appear on the same page with links, tags, phonetic spellings, etc.
I'm hoping someone here knows the science about using the lang="zh" xml:lang="zh" attributes within text and the effects on ranking for text within the declarations. And it'd be great if there was clarification on the link juice passed using the hreflang attribute for both internal and external links. Also, of course, any info on using both English and Chinese characters in the URL would be most helpful. A heads up on any other language specific SEO issues would also be much appreciated.
My goal is to get the most out of both languages per page in terms of ranking.
-
I thought about a subdomain, but I think it would complicate things from an SEO standpoint. From what I've learned, a subdomain here would get treated as a separate domain and send link juice to an English page that wouldn't be accessible to visitors direct (only within another Chinese page as a lightbox). I'm sure there's a cleaner way to do this.
What I'm looking for is ranking effects of using the Lang element or ATTLIST declaration with lang element to identify various languages on the same page. Or if there is any other way to let search engines know I'm using multiple languages on a single page, it'd be a super time saver.
Thanks for all your input so far!
-
Right. If both languages are to be that dominant it could justify the use of a subdomain for the English weighted portions, but it would take some clever coding to get it right.
-
Thanks for the input Ryan. My challenge here is that both languages will be used on nearly all pages site wide. I'll look deeper into the JS lightbox method, but my initial thoughts are that the html would appear in multiple places on the site, and I'm not sure how search engines will treat an English document inside a Chinese document. Of course my priority is usability, but as I go through the design process, I was just hoping to find a way to get the search engines to count content in both languages toward SEO ranking.
-
Since it's native Chinese speakers I'd weight everything towards that priority, i.e. title tags begin in Chinese and then have their English translation. Obviously your going to run into problems with length there, but in other on page areas you should be fine. If it's only one page I'd also lean towards choosing zh as your language setting. One strategy that you could pursue however would be to code two separate, but duplicate pages, one in English, the other in Chinese that are on separate subdomains then as someone goes through the page they could study flash card style with translations being pulled from the other subdomain via a lightbox or something similar. It would be difficult and more work, but you'd also have more ability to really strengthen results, one for English and one for Chinese. Bilingual pages aren't my specialty though. I think a French / Canadian SEO could add some valuable input here as they have English and French as dual official language. Pinging someone from there could be useful, especially in a place like Montreal. Hopefully my above suggestion helps somewhat. Sorry I can't add more input about the science.
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
-
I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks1 -
Shopify SEO - Double Filter Pages
Hi Experts, Single filter page: /collections/dining-chairs/black
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
-- currently, canonical the same: /collections/dining-chairs/black
-- currently, index, follow Double filter page: /collections/dining-chairs/black+fabric
-- currently, canonical the same: /collections/dining-chairs/black+fabric
-- currently, noindex, follow My question is about double filter page above:
if noindexing is the better option OR should I change the canonical to /collections/dining-chairs/black Thank you0 -
How to find orphan pages
Hi all, I've been checking these forums for an answer on how to find orphaned pages on my site and I can see a lot of people are saying that I should cross check the my XML sitemap against a Screaming Frog crawl of my site. However, the sitemap is created using Screaming Frog in the first place... (I'm sure this is the case for a lot of people too). Are there any other ways to get a full list of orphaned pages? I assume it would be a developer request but where can I ask them to look / extract? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KJH-HAC1 -
Schema.org product offer with a price range, or multiple offers with single prices?
I'm implementing Schema.org, (JSON-LD), on an eCommerce site. Each product has a few different variations, and these variations can change the price, (think T-shirts, but blue & white cost $5, red is $5.50, and yellow is $6). In my Schema.org markup, (using JSON-LD), in each Product's Offer, I could either have a single Offer with a price range, (minPricd: $5, maxPrice $6), or I could add a separate Offer for each variation, each with its own, correct, price set. Is one of these better than the other? Why? I've been looking at the WooCommerce code and they seem to do the single offer with a price range, but that could be because it's more flexible for a system that's used by millions of people.
Technical SEO | | 4RS_John1 -
Static or dynamic category pages for seo
Hi, I'm developing an accommodation site with a limited number of properties in 8 categories. I had been looking at making the properties blog posts and then using category function to show lists but its going to require a lot of customisation and I have seo concerns about the dynamic content as the category page is crucial. As I don't have a lot to add and listings will remain the same my latest thought was to create all as pages. However if I create a page with a list of 12 properties on a category page is there anyway of adding some sorting criteria to that page (would be 7 options - swimming pool, near beach, on site creche, budget, mid-range, luxury) Thanks for any tips Neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Multiple urls for posting multiple classified ads
Want to optimize referral traffic while at same time keep search engines happy and the ads posted. Have a client who advertises on several classified ad sites around the globe. Which is better (post Panda), having multiple identical urls using canonicals to redirect juice to original url? For example: www.bluewidgets.com is the original www.bluewidgetsusa.com www.blue-widgets-galore.com Or, should the duplicate pages be directed to original using a 301? Currently using duplicate urls. Am currently not using "nofollow" tags on those pages.
Technical SEO | | AllIsWell0 -
What are the potential SEO downsides of using a service like unbounce for content pages?
I'm thinking of using unbounce.com to create some content driven pages. Unbounce is simple, easy-to-use, and very easy for non-devs at my company to create variations on pages. I know they allow adding meta descriptions, title tags, etc and allow it to be indexable by Google, but I was wondering if there were any potential downsides to using unbounce as opposed to hosting it myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Seiyav0 -
Same Video on Multiple Pages and Sites... Duplicate Issues?
We're rolling out quite a bit of pro video and hosting on a 3-party platform/player (likely BrightCove) that also allows us to have the URL reside on our domain. Here is a scenario for a particular video asset: A. It's on a product page that the video is relevant for. B. We have an entry on our blog with the video C. We have a separate section of our site "Video Library" that provides a centralized view of all videos. It's there too. D. We eventually give the video to other sites (bloggers, industry educational sites etc) for outreach and link-building. A through C on our domain are all for user experience as every page is very relevant, but are there any duplicate video issues here? We would likely only have the transcript on the product page (though we're open to suggestions). Any related feedback would be appreciated. We want to make this scalable and done properly from the beginning (will be rolling out 1000+ videos in 2010)
Technical SEO | | SEOPA0