Hello, I have a website and I want to get it translated in various other languages. Right now it is in English only. What would be the best way to organize the various language pages to optimize my website for search engines? Thanks in advance
if you are asking what is the best way to do this from a technical perspective, i was wondering the same thing. i wrote a post a few months back asking the same question, you can find it in my history...i dont remember getting a solid answer.
What kind of site is this? In case of company sites the most frequently used scheme is to buy domains with national TLD's. When you'll go for that and buy (.ie, .co.uk, .de, .ru etc.) you'll rank better in local Google SERP's. But it's not very cheap and easy to secure the same domain name with different TLD's. If you don't want to do separate sites for every language. I suggest you to use directories to divide site into different language versions. For example: www.mysite.com/en, www.mysite.com/de etc. for main pages and www.mysite.com/en/terms-of-service, www.mysite.com/de/deutsche-touring-meisterschaft etc. for subpages. Such division is not only clear and informative for users, but also digestible for SE's.
I'd suggest you to also read webpro news and get the some ideas about your Q's for SEO in different languages. webpronews.com/expertarticles/2006/05/22/multiplelanguages-websites-and-seo Thanks John
Grab a cup of coffee/tea/beer (for Brits) and read followings 1) If you have offices in different countries then you must go for the full country domain. Period. Don't look for any other alternatives. 2) If you don't have offices in various countries but just want to have various languages then better don't go for country level domains in which case you have following 2 options 2.1) Create sub domain per language. Example for French create fr.yourdomain.com etc. etc. 2.2) Create sub folders (in host physcially) and host language specific pages there Example www.yourdomain.com/french www.yourdomain.com/german etc etc. You might not need to create a sub folders physcially in the host if you can get it working to have above URL structure from your website (either via CMS if you have any or mod_rewrtie or any other technique) but ultimately you must have above hierarchy. And don't shorten the language names like fr, de etc, don't be miser having a full language name wouldn't harm you but it would be more human friendly and search engine friendly. Can you tell which language "si" represent without searching on internet? So use full language name. between 2.1 and 2.2 I would recommend 2.1 a sub domain is more powerful than sub pages. Any sub domain is (almost) treated as a full domain. And follow these instructions for any of above selected method 1) A mere translation of English to other language wouldn't work. You have to adopt strategy for each language to do keyword research, optimize the content for those keywords. In other words you have to do full SEO for each language specific website/subdomain/subpages as you do for English website. 2) For each page write description from scratch, don't translate. 3) Add language/Country name selection option in HTML code (no drop down menu or js or fancy Ajax stuff) in the header in top of all pages. 4) In site map (not the Google sitemap) add your other language website links .. .. It is up to you how you manage all those pages but I can tell you it is daunting task. Even 2 languages with 20 odd pages would give you fill time job enough for 2 people for months. I think I cover a lot , for free, let me know if you still need some more info?
No need. A little known trick! In Google Webmaster tools you can Geo-Target Subfolders. But sweetfunny there's no option are you on drugs? Here's what you do, create each of your language specific content in sub-folders of your choice such as: www.mysite.com/es www.mysite.com/it www.mysite.com/de And so on, "then" you can register a new Webmaster Tools account for each language specific sub-folder. Login to each account and go to Tools > Set Geographic Target and you are done, simple. I done this for a multi-language site recently and the results were better than expected, each sub-folder experienced a dramatic improvement for their respective Google locality. Also yes, the folks at Google said this is the best way of doing it.
Wow man you are awesome thanks a lot for sharing such good info. I think this is enough for me to get busy for a lot of time.