What is the best way to reach a spanish audience. I am considering adding a tool offered by altavista to translate my pages. Will this affect ranking at all. What is the best way to accomplish this?
I think it is a good idea to put translators on a site and will help to attract more visitors. I am also considering to do that.
I´ve been looking into this, but the other way around. My site is in spanish and I want to offer an english version. The problem with those translator tools is that they don´t give a good enough translation and thus you won´t offer good enough spanish content to really be of interest to spanish speakers. Would you remain much time on a site that offers english that is not english? You´re only safe bet would be to translate your site´s content manually.
What Dogs_and_things mentions is vital for a good, quality website. I can do translations between the two languages so if you need any help pm me. BTW dogs, was just checking your site and you have lots of info. Congratulations. Mind if I ask...why Maya?
You may consider enlisting the help of someone who is fluent in both languages to do a real translation. I am multi-lingual and when I look at what the auto-translators usually do, I end up busting a gut laughing. It's like the hilarious, albeit useless, instructions you get on some of these products that were poorly translated from Chinese to English.
Don't use any automatic translators. As someone studying a second language, I know all too well that their grammar is horrible. If you want to get a translation, hirer a fluent person to do the job. For Spanish-English, this shouldn't be hard at all.
A friend of mine runs a translation service, I have emailed her this link, hopefully she will be able to help you all out Pete
Sure, it is a good idea. BTW, May I ask you why so don't target google spain and rank high to get spanish audience. You can always make two versions of you site.. one in english and other in spanish. You can run these two versions under same domain or different domain as well. If you hit google spain then I think it will do wonder. Now, how to hit google spain? * Do on-page seo * Do Spanish directory submissions, you can hire me for that as I think I am only one here who is offering this service. * Do social bookmarking * Buy targeted traffic etc etc... Hope I am not off the topic.
Thank you, I´m glad you noticed the amount of info. Maya was a dog I had years ago, and she was so obedient and good in all aspects that she deserved a dog school to be named after her. I´ve been trying some translation bots and was put off terribly. I can´t read any language when it´s not grammatically correct. If I enter a site with grammatically incorrect spanish or english I´m gone, straight away.
If anyone needs a manual translation into ANY language please contact me for details. We run a translation service for all our clients and the advantages of having your website manually translated for those wishing to actually sell a product or service from your website convincingly outweigh the advantages of using an automatic translator. Imagine if a customer came across your website in English which was written by a 5-year old. The customer would lose all confidence in the services you were offering and you would lose the sale. I do however believe the advantages are not so great if you're running an adsense site as the adverts would *probably* be more appealing than the actual website content. If you want to build a quality site, automatic translators are not the way to go.