Adding content in different languages
-
I have a site which offers free printable greeting cards in English. I have noticed that many people find the site from other countries with keywords in foreign languages. The bounce rate from these countries is high since presumably they leave when they realize that all cards are in English only. I was thinking of providing some greeting cards in different languages. I was thinking of offering each language in a subfolder which is only have the cards in that language but the content will either be in English or an automatic translation per IP. I do not plan to translate the content into different languages only the cards. What is the best way to do this?
-
Hi Nicole,
Your situation adds an interesting twist. First let me share I do not have personal experience with this particular situation where the images contain translated text and the only text which is being auto-translated is the alt tags and page title. If anyone else has experience with a similar situation please jump in!
If I am understanding you correctly, the main site might be NicolesGreetingCards.com, and you may offer a Spanish folder such as NicolesGreetingCards.com/es for your Spanish cards.
On the main site you would have a "Merry Christmas" greeting card, where your /es folder would have a "Feliz Navidad" greeting card. Assuming my understanding is correct I would share the following feedback:
-
Google focuses on country-specific content rather moreso then language specific. Spanish in Mexico (/mx) is not the same as Spanish in Spain (/es). The same is true for English as US English is not the same as UK English. I would recommend offering a folder for each country rather then each language.
-
Your country folders should not only adjust for language but for all local factors. For example currency, measurement systems, laws, customs, etc.
-
My inexperienced guess is since you are performing very little translating it would be safe to use the automatic translations, but I would recommend using Mechanical Turk or a similar outsource worker approach for translations. It is exceptionally cheap and easy to use.
-
It seems you really should have some actual text as content. Whatever images you offer should ideally be searchable. Some types of cards I have seen are "Happy Birthday", "Happy Birthday from Son", "Happy Birthday from Wife", "Happy Birthday from Father", etc. The addition of those categories or minimal amount of text would help users locate the cards they seek. This text would require translation as well.
-
Be sure to use the language meta tags for translated content. Google should mostly pick up that /es is for Spain, but you want to provide all the proper signals to be certain they handle your content properly.
Good luck!
-
-
Thanks for your reply.
I realize that I didn't explain my question clearly. In the language folders I won't have any text but only images. Each image contains text (birthday wishes) in the language of that folder which is why I can't use the regular images. My goal is to get traffic for these languages via Google images only. The only translation that I plan to do is for the alt tags and page title. There will be no other text besides a link to the other languages.
Does that make a difference at all or anything I should be aware of regarding seo for google images in different countries?
-
I was thinking of offering each language in a subfolder which is only have the cards in that language but the content will either be in English or an automatic translation per IP. I do not plan to translate the content into different languages only the cards.
Based on your wishes, the proper method would be simply to add a translate widget to your web page. You would NOT want to add additional folders for content which is translated by any form of automatic translator as that violates Google's guidelines.
If you wish to have a human translate the content, then you are welcome to add language folders. The content would then be viewed as unique by Google and shared in their search results. If you attempt to display automatic translate in the same manner, you would likely incur a Google penalty.
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
-
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish)
What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish). For the user it would be useful to see these reviews but I am concerned about negative SEO impact.
International SEO | | lcourse
I would not want to invest into having them all translated by human translator. Any suggestions?0 -
Schema for languages Subfolders
I'm using static Schema for each language subfolder in my website, Should i use the same "URL, description" for every language? or i have to use the URL and description according to the language? I'm using that schema for english should i change URL and description in the other languages? for example
International SEO | | MTBE0 -
International Sites and Duplicate Content
Hello, I am working on a project where have some doubts regarding the structure of international sites and multi languages.Website is in the fashion industry. I think is a common problem for this industry. Website is translated in 5 languages and sell in 21 countries. As you can imagine this create a huge number of urls, so much that with ScreamingFrog I cant even complete the crawling. Perhaps the UK site is visible in all those versions http://www.MyDomain.com/en/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/it/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/de/GB/ http://www.MyDomain.com/es/GB/ Obviously for SEO only the first version is important One other example, the French site is available in 5 languages and again... http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/en/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/it/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/de/FR/ http://www.MyDomain.com/es/FR/ And so on...this is creating 3 issues mainly: Endless crawling - with crawlers not focusing on most important pages Duplication of content Wrong GEO urls ranking in Google I have already implemented href lang but didn't noticed any improvements. Therefore my question is Should I exclude with "robots.txt" and "no index" the non appropriate targeting? Perhaps for UK leave crawable just English version i.e. http://www.MyDomain.com/en/GB/, for France just the French version http://www.MyDomain.com/fr/FR/ and so on What I would like to get doing this is to have the crawlers more focused on the important SEO pages, avoid content duplication and wrong urls rankings on local Google Please comment
International SEO | | guidoampollini0 -
Multilanguage duplicate content question
I have following situation; First site, in four languages
International SEO | | nans
Second site, in one language Let's say we have the following setup: www.domain1.be/nl (dutch)
www.domain1.be/fr (french)
www.domain1.be/en (english)
www.domain1.be/de (german) www.domain2.be/ (french only) Possible problem is the content on
www.domain1.be/fr
www.domain2.be
Content on domain2 is a copy of domain1/fr. So French content is duplicated. For domain1, the majority (80%) are Dutch speaking clients, domain2 is 100% French.
Both companies operate in same country, one in the north, the second one in the south. QUESTION; what about duplicate content?
Can we 'fix' that with using the canonical tag? Canonical on domain1 (fr pages), pointin to domain2? Or vice versa.
Domain1 is more important than domain2, but customers of domain2 should not be pointed to domain1. Anybody any advice?0 -
Do I have duplicate content issues to be worried about?
Hey guys, We built a website http://www.cylon.com/ targeting different regions but with the same English langauage (Ireland, England and America). The content for the most part is the same set up on 3 different subfolders. http://www.cylon.com/ - Targeting United States in WMT http://www.cylon.com/ie - Targeting Ireland in WMT http://www.cylon.com/uk - Targeting UK in WMT Do I have duplicate content issues to be worried about? If so, how do I get around this issue? Also is there anyway of finding out if Google have in some way penalised these pages for having the same content on other pages trageting different Countries? I have not received any messages from Google in WMT saying there is duplicate so I'm not sure if this is an issue. Thanks Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0 -
Showing different content according to different geo-locations on same URL
We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language). For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia. Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL. How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives? Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL? What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan? Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for? Kindest Regards L.B.
International SEO | | seoec0 -
Should I be deindexing pages with thin or weak content?
If I have pages that rank product categories by alphabetical order should I deindex those pages? Keeping in mind the pages do not have any content apart from product titles? For example: www.url.com/albums/a/ www.url.com/albums/b/ If I deindexed these pages would I lose any authority passed through internal linking?
International SEO | | Jonathan_Hatton0 -
Geotarget subfolders with the same language or get rid of duplicates but lose option to geotarget?
Hi, we have a domain that is aimed to cover LatAm region. Currently, the homepage contains country selector for ~20 countries. 95% of them hold content in Spanish. We have only homepages for each regions as separate subfolders, i.e.
International SEO | | eset
www.maindomain.com/co
www.maindomain.com/cl
www.maindomain.com/br
etc. but once the user clicks on menu item he is taken back to main domain subpages, i.e. www.maindomain.com/comprar My struggle is to decide whether it is better to: A) copy all content for each subfolder, which will create huge amount of duplicates (there are no resources to create unique content and it is even impossible taking into account nature of the product - mostly tech.specs, etc.) and implement hreflang sitemaps and configure GWT to target each country with its own Spanish content (the same for each country) OR B) remove all local subfolders and keep only main domain in Spanish that will serve all countries within the region. With this option, we will get rid of duplicates but also lose option to geotarget. So, my questions is which option will do less harm, or if there is any other approach that comes to your minds. I consulted with two agencies but still haven't got clear answer. Thanks a lot for your help!0