Best Way to Handle Multi-Language Sites
-
In the last year we've made a few significant changes to the structure of our site - namely adding translations for a few languages. We have historically been gaining in organic search by about 10% each month, but in the last two months we've leveled out and seen a slight dip.
I am wondering if this has something to do with the addition of the second language, and namely if there's a chance we've been penalized due to duplicate content.
We have almost all pages / content on the site translated by a translator, but the way the development works the site will grab the english version if a translation hasn't been added - potentially adding some duplicate content?
The URL structure remains the same, other than the addiion of the language - site.com/our-tour vs site.com/de/our-tour
We also haven't translated the tour name itself, so that remains the same.
Just wondering if anyone has any feedback on best practices here or things I should be looking out for.
Thanks in Advance.
-
You need to share your website. If you want to show publicly, you can send me as private.
-
Adding the English content when the translation hasn't been added is an error on your side, mainly for the following reasons:
- You are posting duplicate content to the English version.
- You are posting English content on a page targeting another language/location.
- You are then deleting the English (duplicated) content from the site and replacing it with the translated one, causing confusion in regards to keyword ranking, or even dead links.
It would be a much better solution to wait for the content to be translated first, and then posting it to the second language version.
Besides that, don't forget that there are always ups and downs when it comes to SEO and that it is normal to have some dips as long as the trend is maintained and quality content is added.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
How to best handle search landing pages - that don't exist
I have quite a bit of blog information that can be searched, which results in "pages" that don't actually live anywhere. These are scanned by Moz and appear as poor page quality for speed, etc. How do I get the service to either ignore all of these or is there a way to treat them as a real page with content? As there are quite a few generated over time, I'd like to be able to capture them somehow. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | amac70 -
What is the best way to deal with creating a separate brand with it's own website when the main site already ranks well for the target keywords?
A client currently has a site that ranks well for a number of queries. They recently created a new site for a spin-off brand/company that they now want to focus on ranking for some of the keywords their original site already ranked for. What would be the best way to go about this without throwing away the existing authority and traffic the original site has for those queries?
On-Page Optimization | | P1WS_Sully0 -
What's the best way to host Videos on my Wordpress site? (SEO-wise)
I have a hard time choosing whether to stream my videos from certain platforms like vimeo, youtube, etc. or embedding the videos into my site, and I'm not quite sure which one Google would like to see more of? And which style will save my page speed from plummeting too much. Any ideas? Thanks guys
On-Page Optimization | | Benavest0 -
Best website IA/structure for SEO?
What's the current thinking on the best structure of information on a website for SEO? Structure for visitors can be best achieved through navigation menus, but I am more interested in how I should organise my URL structure so Google can make sense of the depth of my site topics. The website is an Asian travel blog so there are essentially two specific types of post on the site. One type is location specific (may be about an attraction, a city, a region or a country). The other type is general (usually about an aspect of travel like travel cash, visas, scams, etc). At the moment, all my general posts are organised like www.asiantraveltips.com/blog/[post-name]. My location-specific posts are organised like www.asiantraveltips.com/[country]/[region-or-city]/[place-name]/ so that Google can see I have depth of topics about each country and region. But I find it hard to keep consistency in this arrangement of URLs and I don't know if I might be better off to just have everything flat and tagged as a blog post like www.asiantraveltips.com/blog/[country]-[region-city]-[post-name]/? What's best practice these days? How are others organising travel blog websites?
On-Page Optimization | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Inbound Linking from your own sites
Good evening, On each of the sites I have made, I have a link with the anchor text 'Build and Design by Christoper Davies' to my own website. This link is in the footer of every page each of all the sites. Should I have a 'no follow' rel added to these links, or does linking from all the sites (on all pages) help my ranking? I am concerned that having so many inbound links from the same sites, with the same anchor text may be doing me more damage than good.
On-Page Optimization | | chrisdavieswebdesign0 -
What's the best way to handle crawling of photo gallery?
When you have a photo gallery with many search filters and loads and loads of pages, is it best to block all the filters and use google's pagination code? Ex: http://photo.net/gallery/photocritique/filter This site has pages for many different queries. While the page titles are unique, the pages are showing duplicated content.
On-Page Optimization | | cakelady0 -
Handling Deleted Pages
The backstory: My site has a fantasy sportsbook where users can place "bets" on pretty much anything. Each game has a unique matchup page, where the odds are displayed and any conversation about the game takes place. Example here. About 95% of the games are automatically graded, but I have to manually grade the rest. Therefore, as soon as every game starts I check to see if any users have made a pick on it, and if not I delete it because it reduces my workload. The problem: About 15% of my search-driven traffic is queries for games that no longer exist, which makes sense because nobody bets on the super obscure games and these games are very easy to rank for. I am currently redirecting them to my 404 page but I'm worried that all of these hits are hurting my reputation with the big G. Would it be better to noindex all of these pages at first and take the noindex away as soon as I'm positive that the game will stay?
On-Page Optimization | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Content for ecommerce site
How important on site/page contents are for ecommerce site. Keeping in mind the page layout. Its not that important to have page copy/content at all for ecommerce sites If yes, does position of content is an important factor? if putting page copy/content in upper fold of a page then the most important thing which is product itself will have less exposure if putting near the footer of the page, does that seem like doing just for the sake of SEs and ranking. How important internal linking form that content would be compare to left panel links or links at the header of a website Thanks Rick
On-Page Optimization | | RickGa0