I have a French Chateau site that I did a couple of years ago for an English couple targetting other English tourists - the site is at the top of Google for most English keywords. They now want to keep the English version but also have an additional French version of the same site to attract French customers. What is the best way to achieve this? - the budget will be minimal!! Do I need to recreate each page with French keywords in the urls and French keywords in the alt text etc and a French translation of the content? Or will this get the pages dumped into the supplemental because of duplicate content? Also, is there some form of programme that will do things for you? Would appreciate any advice as this is all new to me.
I dont think so there's way other than writing pages in French. I work for a French MNC they always have French translated pages in addition to English. But I am also interested in knowing if there's any way out for your problem. Do post if you find any alternative.
Siince ur translating from french to english mostly u wont face any duplicate issue IMO i am assuming ur english site will be in a directory
We're planning - at this stage - of keeping hte English site as is and then creating a subdirectory which is exactly the same as the Egnlish only in French. I have heard somewhere that you could use Google translation to get a French copy of text - have not yet checked this out???
If it's to attract customers, you would be better off having the text translated by a person rather than using a software. You will not be banned for duplicate content since the text will be totally different. I also suggest you use your main keyword to name your subdirectory. Also most french directories only accept domain/subdomain for entries so if you are serious about ranking this french version on search engines, use a subdomain or a new domain name. fr.yourdomain.com will do well
Subdomains are fine for making a copy of your website in another language. Of course, everything has to be translated. Texts, keywords, urls... I would advise to spend money on the translation work more than anything else. You can see right here, on this forum, so many posts in poor english! What kind of customers are you looking for? Poor english might be OK for an cheap indian directory submission service, it will not do if you want attract rich tourists. The french expect that the people who own castles know how to write properly...
Many thanks for your replies all - I will put the question of paying for a proper translation to the customer. Am slightly confused: My domain is www.chateaudeplehaut.co.uk How can I create fr.chateaudeplehaut.co.uk without creating a whole new domain - which then has to go through an aging process? Would I create a subdomain: www.chateaudeplehaut.co.uk/french and then have duplicated french copies of all my folders and files within this siubdomain? Would this subdomain do OK in french serps?? Many thanks to anyone who can advise.
there might be an option of creating alias in your hosting control panel, you can do from there and use your desired URL. I think that will help you....
Kelly2 Many thanks for this - am so sorry to be a bit dense but this is new to me and I want to get it exactly right. For a doman www.chateaudeplehaut.co.uk I add a subdomain: ???? Can I add a .com subdomain extension when I have a .co.uk domain????
nehrav - Are you saying that adding a .com subdomain is not possible for a .co.uk domain? in other words, could my subdomain be: ???
Agreed on both counts. A subdomain is this NEWDOMAIN.yoursite.co.uk A subfolder is this yoursite.co.uk/SUBFOLDER They're pretty much considered equal as far as google authority, as far as I know. http://chateaudeplehaut.fr is available btw. You could register it unless France has a rule that only inhabitants may register .fr domains. On the Engrish page, any links to French language takes them to the chateaudeplehaut.fr page, and any links to Engrish on that site go back to chateaudeplehaut.co.uk What's nice about this is, Google can have local searches. French people who are in France may prefer results for certain things from domains that end in .fr rather than end in .co.uk (since they know that's British). As Google is trying to make searching more local (I don't necessarily think this is a good thing), having a separate domain may be smarter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- You may want to avoid the way we've done it: On a site where we aren't using Apache's mod_rewrite, we have this type of url: http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/main.pl and if you click on a language you'd get something like http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/main.pl?taal=ES (spanish language) Once the person has chosen their language, the server sets a session or maybe a cookie of some sort, so the rest of the urls are the same as what you'd get by default, but the language file served is the one you've chosen. This may be a bad thing to do since the googles can't see a url difference. So the same url may or may not go to the same text. They don't like that. Also sux0rz for bookmarking. Choose a language, go to a page, copy the url, then give it to someone else. They'll be presented the page in the default language, not the chosen language. So I'd recommend making sure the French language pages have their own unique urls from the Engrish ones.
don't really like translating static pages, what i suggest is that you invest in rebuilding your site from scratch, making a database behind where you simply take care of making a table containing langages table so that you can add remove any langage you want in the future, all you have to do lately is to write your text in the langage you want. translating is always approximative and you run a risk loosing your french clients if translation is poor. good luck
Hire a translator to translate the content, then use ip geolocation to guess the user's location, and stoke a cookie if they are from france, to request french information from the database If this is too complex, hire a translator and copy your content to a new domain/subdomain.
Hi, I have followed all theses post and I can propose you a Perfect french translation including all metatags and alt. I would transform you actual english site in Multilanguage site, than you will able to add as many languages you want in the future. Concerning domain name my advice would be to buy the .com or even better the .fr extension, you'll just have to redirect the domain name on mysite.co.uk/index.php?lang=french. Other solution to create a subdomaine fr.mysite... and copy in it all the english website translated in French Important notice : My translation and integration price will not be cheap, but it will be perfect. I'm french native If you are interested, please PM