Spanish version of site - best practice?
-
I need to create a Spanish version of an existing site.
My idea was to have the Spanish content switch out the English content if the query string had something like ?l=es. It would also drop a cookie so that all other pages would switch out content as well.
I do want the Spanish content to be indexed and rank in the search engines, though. I would include all of the Spanish versions (with the ?l=es) in the site map and link to them on every page with a link to the Spanish version.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Is this a bad idea?
Thanks!
Tom
-
Thanks everyone. This particular situation is for a local doctor's site who wants to target the Spanish speaking populace as well. In this case, I'll be doing what everyone recommended and putting it into a sub directory /es/. Thanks also to Matt for the additional info on the hreflang. I wouldn't have thought of or found that.
Tom
-
Adding onto what Highland said (and I agree, if you are country-targeting, get the .es) but make sure you use the appropriate hreflang tags to tell Google where to find the Spanish version.
Google recommends hreflang when:
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page
See more here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
-
Are we talking about something focused on a different country or just a different language group? If it's a different country, I would duplicate your site and then buy the appropriate ccTLD. Matt Cutts has indicated this is the preferred method for doing international and there is not penalty for duplication. This also helps greatly with geotargeting.
If all you want to do is add a different language to the same site, I would go with a subdirectory as opposed to a query string entry. Most sites tend to gravitate towards this anyways (domain.com/en, domain.com/es, domain.com/fr, etc.). Based on what Google has said in the past, this is their preference as well.
If neither is an option, Google will still recognize the page a different based on the query string.
-
since it's a different language you would be better with duping the site and making a /es/ folder.
this would allow you to use spanish keywords in the file names for better SEO. But you could theoretically do it the way you mentioned.
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
-
2 version of meta description and title
Hi guys, I have seen two versions of meta descriptions and meta titles for one URL (this is happening on a few of my pages). Initially, I thought Google is pulling the information from my page content. However, it is not the case. I have realized the information showing on SERPs are very old description (years ago information). Just a bit background information, we had a new website launched in April this year. The issue stated since the new website launch. Anyone experienced similar situation?
On-Page Optimization | | pengiuns-al0 -
Redirects for new site new urls?
If redoing a site and updating some of the url's for SEO should you do permanent redirects for the old sites url's ? Using WordPress. I saw that the Yoast Pro plugin allows you to do this inside WordPress , is this the best way? Suggestions.? I know there are old articles written out on the web pointing back to the what will be soon old url's so just wondering what's the best way to go about this. Thanks Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott3150 -
Tips for Getting a Very Small Site to Rank
I am working on a very small (two page) site for a client, and trying to rank for some very competitive local terms. The site is www.arlingtonbuilders.com, and our terms center around local cities (like Arlington) plus "custom homes," "custom renovations," etc. I feel very limited in terms of what I can do on the site, and I'm building citations offsite, but I feel stuck. I'd love some tips for helping them rank better without building out an entire site.
On-Page Optimization | | ScottImageWorks3 -
Positioning one site in two languages
Hi all, I have used the plugin wpml in order to have one site in different languages (Spanish and English). The problem is that this plugin doesn't work with all in one SEO plugin so that the spanish home and the english home have the same title. Google has positionated in the first position the english one in google.es. How can I revert the situation if I fix the problem with other plugin? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
What is the best way to resolve duplicate content issue
Hi I have a client whose site content has been scraped and used in numerous other sites. This is detrimental to ranking. One term we wish to rank for is nowhere. My question is this: what's the quickest way to resolve a duplicate content issue when other sites have stolen your content? I understand that maybe I should firstly contact these site owners and 'appeal to their better nature'. This will take time and they may not even comply. I've also considered rewriting our content. Again this takes time. Has anybody experienced this issue before? If so how did you come to a solution? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | sicseo0 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0 -
Linking within Secondary Site
So we've got a secondary site that has quite a bit of authority & links that used to have all types of info on parasailing. All those pages are gone and homepage is now a salespage (management decision, not mine) Our main site sells a wide range of tours and activities and does have a page for parasailing. The secondary site uses the same template/navigation as our main site (again, not my decision). Do you think that's an effective way to send link juice to our main site? The secondary site has some pretty awesome high authority sites linking to it. I've considered 301'ing the whole site to our main site but it's got a really solid domain name and I'd like to take up 2 SERP listings (main and secondary site) Is there a better way to have double listings but still send a good amount of link juice?
On-Page Optimization | | SoulSurfer80 -
How to organize a Knowledge Center for best SEO?
Hi, My Client is facing pushback from her company on separating assets into different pages (webinars, press releases, by-lines, etc) vs lumping them all together in one page. We need to define the SEO benefits of doing this in an organized fashion vs one big lump. Can you help? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | ScratchMM0