What is the best CMS Approach for Multilingual Versions of Site?
-
We have expanded into France and Brazil and now have a someone in-house that can translate to French and Brazilian Portuguese. I own ".fr" and ".com.br" versions of our domain. We are using Wordpress for our CMS. We are currently publishing about 2 articles a week on English site which we would be translating and publishing through new international sites (when appropriate). We will be changing out photos and videos at times in addition to all the text/copy.
So, before I jump deep into this I wanted to reach out for help regarding the best modern approach to this. Should I use some sort of WP Plugin that will let me manage each of these through 1 WP install or is it better to run each separately through multiple WP installs?
I want to achieve this while...
- avoiding any duplicate content penalties.
- provide easy admin/editor management of publishing content.
Any help/advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-
Seems like the safe solution would be to go with separate sites and localize hosting for each as you mentioned.
I just discovered Multilingual Press WP plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/multilingual-press/). Looks like it can provide ccTld and ability to manage all through a single WP Site with Pro version. I would lose the potential SEO benefit from local hosting, but efficient management might beat that. Need to dig into this a bit more.
Also, WordPress Multilingual plugin (http://wpml.org) was recommended to me for "folders" or "sub-domain" solutions. I need to dig into this more, but I do feel better about using ccTld for each.
Thanks for all the help and resources!
-
Wow that is an interesting work around! Thanks for sharing!
-
In my experience, the best way to do this would be to set up the .fr domain separately as it's own separate WordPress installation, and have it hosted at a hosting company with a presence in France.
However, what's best for SEO sometimes creates more work for administering a site, vs. having it all available from one login in one WordPress instance.
As far as using a .fr domain, there are many schools of thought on this.
This Moz blog goes into the top strategies:
http://moz.com/blog/international-seo-dropping-the-information-dustAmazon uses ccTld (Country Code, Top Level Domains). For example, Amazon.com, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, etc.
Apple uses a subdomain / sub-carpet strategy: (i.e. store.apple.com/es)
In my past experience building out eCommerce and other stores, if you host locally, and use different ccTld (i.e. domain.fr), you won't have to worry about the duplicate content issue, as Google and other search engines will see this as it's own site, especially if it's translated (well) into another language.
Here's more on International SEO best practices:
http://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seoI hope this helps!
-- Jeff -
I recently had to solve the same issue. I don't know if my approach is the best one, but I will describe it.
- I use tags to set the post language, "lang=EN" is the tag for english post, "lang=IT" is the tag for the italian post, etc...
- I wrote a 20 lines WP plugin to add a custom panel in the post edit page, the custom panel show a list of input fields, one input field for each enabled language (in my case were EN+IT+DE), for the language of the post the input field is prefilled with the slug of the post and read only, for the other languages the input field is manually filled with the slug of the corresponding post in the other language. I didn't make those fields mandatory, but you can choose to do so with 1 line of code.
- The language switcher just redirect to it.domain.com or de.domain.com or domain.com.
- You can edit (again just few lines of code) the WP template you use to filter the blog roll according to the selected language, showing all post tagged with that language plus all post without any language tag (that's an arbitrary decision, in your case maybe you want to filter those out, yes not filtering them out you incur in content duplication).
At the end was just few lines of code, and I could even do it myself (I am far from a PHP coder).
In my case I didn't edit the WP template because I am using a different rendering engine, but that doesn't mean much.
I would not use different WP installation, it makes editing cumbersome.
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
-
Google for Jobs: how to deal with third-party sites that appear instead of your own?
We have shared our company's job postings on several third-party websites, including The Muse, as well as putting the job postings on our own website. Our site and The Muse have about the same schema markup except for these differences: The Muse...
Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P
• Lists Experience Requirements
• Uses HTML in the description with tags and other markup (our website just has plain text)
• Has a Name in JobPosting
• URL is specific to the position (our website's URL just goes to the homepage)
• Has a logo URL for Organization When you type the exact job posting's title into Google, The Muse posting shows up in Google for Jobs--not our website's duplicate copy. The only way to see our website's job posting is to type in the exact job title plus "site:http://www.oursite.com". What is a good approach for getting our website's posting to be the priority in Google for Jobs? Do we need to remove postings from third-party sites? Structure them differently? Do organic factors affect which version of the job posting is shown, and if so, can I assume that our site will face challenges outranking a big third-party site?1 -
Call Tracking Best Practises for General SEO
Hey folks, So I'm aware of the importance of consistent citations, and the mayhem call tracking numbers have been known to cause in regards to that in that past. So just wanted some up to date clarification on these two things: Local SEO isn't strictly speaking a big deal for us as we supply a software and as such are technically global. I'm presuming consistent citations are still worth aiming for though, and will help increase general authority as well? Let me know if I'm totally wrong about that! What's the best practise set up for call tracking, given that your main NAP number you'd obviously want hardcoded somewhere, alongside showing your dynamic numbers to relevant visitors. Apologies for any ignorance, as always any help and advice is muchos appreciato.
Local Website Optimization | | Zoope1 -
International Sites
Hi Guys Just wanting to get some feedback on best practices for international website. The main website is a .co.uk there looking to target France & Belgium. The web hosting is UK based. Do we replicate the UK site and translate to local language but use a .fr domain and have 3 versions of the websites on 3 separate domains? or do just use the co.uk with french & Belgium translation have pages related to those countries? Any assistance will be appreciated
Local Website Optimization | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Local SEO Best Practise?
We are planning to localize our website by launching CCTLD. But there is a little confusion about some aspects, which are: Should we track location and take our visitors to their native domain? Or do we need to take our visitors to .com domain and show a Popup, if they want to visit the native region website? What is the best case study for localization?
Local Website Optimization | | UmairGadit0 -
Why has my site dropped to page 2?
I haven't been paying attention to my sites SERP for the past year, and only realized I've dropped to page 2 on a keyword search. Specifically, on Google.ca, searching the keywords "wedding invitations" My site, www.stephita.com, used to consistently rank in the top 3 links. While my competitors have leapfrogged me. 😞 I realized that my site wasn't "mobile-friendly", and had a few other issues like keyword stuffing, long meta descriptions and titles. I've fixed these issues "now", but wanted to know does this mean my site was severely penalized by the Panda/Penguin updates for the last few years? Does having a PR3 site mean anything? My competitors who our rank me on SERP, are all PR1 sites. Greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me! 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | TysonWong0 -
Does multiple sites that relate to one company hurt seo
I know this has been asked and answered but my situation is a little different. I am a local electrical contractor. I specialize in a service and not a product. Competition is high in the local market due to the other electrical contractors that have well seasoned sites with very good DA/PA. Although new to the web I am not new to the trade. Throughout years almost back to the AOL dialup days I have been collecting domain names for this particular purpose. Now I want to put them to good use. Being an electrical contractor, there are many different facets of work and services we provide. My primary site is empireelec.com A second site I threw online overnight with minimal content is jacksonvillelightingrepair.com. Although it is a fresh site, there is minimal content and I have put almost zero effort in to it. It appears to be ranking for keywords a lot quicker. That leads me to believe I should utilize my other domain jacksonvillefloridaelectrician.com and target just the keyword Jacksonville Florida Electrician. It leads me to believe I should use jacksonvillebeachelectrician.com for targeting electricians in jacksonville beach. And again with jacksonvilleelectricianservice.com I can provide a unique phone number for each site. Am I going about this all wrong? Everything I read says no,no,no but I feel my situation is a little more unique.
Local Website Optimization | | empireelec1 -
Server response time: restructure the site or create the new one? SEO opinions needed.
Hi everyone, The internal structure of our existing site increase server response time (6 sec) which is way below Google 0.2sec standards and also make prospects leave the site before it's loaded. Now we have two options (same price): restructure the site's modules, panels etc create new site (recommended by developers)
Local Website Optimization | | Ryan_V
Both options will extend the same design and functionality. I just wanted to know which option SEO community will recommend?0 -
Search Result Discrepancy: Keyword "Dresses" shows international sites in the search results of Google.co.in.
Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Myntra0