For some, learning SEO is like learning a foreign language.SEO has some difficult concepts to master and the field is always changing. One of the major considerations, especially with the growth in Internet use worldwide, is how to create SEO strategy for a multilingual website.
Your well-intentioned SEO efforts for the local language can literally get lost in translation when you apply them to foreign-language websites.
Internet users in 2012 as a percentage of a country’s population
Google Recommends One Language Per Page
Don’t use more than one language on a single page. According to the Google Webmaster Central blog, Google tries to determine the main language of each web page. To make language recognition easier, use only one language per page (including headers, footers and the like) and avoid side-by-side translations.
Translation Services
Invest in a reputable, reliable translation service. A good translator will pick up language and cultural nuances that an automatic translation tool will miss. It’s worth the investment.
Automatic Translation Can Lead To Poor Content
If you must use automatic translations, don’t allow them to be indexed. If you’ve ever tried to decipher an automatic translation, you’ll know why. Such translations are often inaccurate and don’t make sense. If this is indexed, the search engines might consider it spam and hurt your rankings.
Avoiding Duplicate Content
Google says there is no need to take action to avoid duplicate content issues if you’re using the same or similar content on different sites or pages aimed at different languages and regions.
The recommendation is to cater your content for each particular audience. Your translator should be able to help you with the local customers so you can change the content so you’re giving the most relevant information to each local community.
Keyword Research
Don’t assume that keywords in one language will work for other languages. Remember the marketing debate surrounding the Chevy Nova? The automaker didn’t take into account its Latin American markets, because Nova means “doesn’t go” in Spanish.
Keep URLs Clean
Often, when you’re dealing with a multilingual site you’re going to change URLs.
Let’s say you have a travel site with the following URL:
http://exampletravelsite.com/France/mountains.html
On the French version of your site, it might look like this:
http://exampletravelsite.com/fr/France/Pyrénées.html
That means you’ve got to use UTF-8 encoding for any special characters.
Your URL would then look like this:
http://exampletravelsite.com/fr/France/Pyr %C3%A9n C3%A9es.html
To determine the correct coding, use an online encoder. However, if you code your URL using UTF-8, the page should also be coded the same way. Otherwise, just remove the special characters altogether:
http://exampletravelsite.com/fr/France/Pyrenees.html
Cross Linking
Don’t forget to cross-link your pages. For example, have a link to the French version of your page on the English-language page and vice versa. That way, if someone accidentally lands on the wrong page, they can reach the correct one in just a click.
Be careful to link the page in one language to the correct version of the URL in another language (not to the homepage of the site in the other language).
For example, link http://exampletravelsite.com/France/mountains.html
to http://exampletravelsite.com/fr/France/Pyrenees.html – not to
http://exampletravelsite.fr
Cookies
Avoid using on-site languages selectors that rely on cookies; most search engines, including Google, can’t read them.
Local Hosting
Failure to host the other-language website in the country you’re targeting. Hosting in the same country as the target audience makes your site more authentic to web users and thus provides more SEO value.
More Than Just Google
Move over, Google. Don’t ignore search engines that are popular in other countries, such as Senzam in the Czech Republic, Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia, Naver or Daum in South Korea.
SEO for multilingual sites doesn’t have to be like the Tower of Babel.
Follow these best practices, and you’ll be soon be fluent in multilingual SEO.
What did I forget?
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Photo Credit : Wikipedia
