Multilingual Version of a Website
-
Hi All,
We created 'EN' and 'FR' version of a website and translated all labels and message from English to France with the help of Google Translator.
Lets take an example: English version URL -
https://www.sitegeek.com/softlayer
France version URL -
https://fr.sitegeek.com/softlayer
France version also contain same reviews available on English version page. So the reviews content or language is same on both pages.
To eliminate the duplicate content issue we put following meta tags on both 'EN" and 'FR' version pages :
So My question is that (1.) Is this the correct implementation of Multilingual Version of a Website?
(2.) Is Added meta tags work for both Google and Bing Search engine? (as Bing not indexing all pages)
(3.) We are translated labels and messages from Google Translator. Is this the issue pages not being Indexed in Bing?
(4.) Finally, What would the correct SEO approch if we translate our site in other languages?
Rajiv
-
Bing does not use the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” markup.
As written by Duane Forrester in this post, Bing relies over a series of signals, the most important being the meta equiv=”content-language” content=”x-X” tag.
And, yes, you can use the meta equiv and hreflang in the same page
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks!
We are following the Google resource here from Google guidelines [please notify where we are wrong] but seems not following Bing. Can we follow both search engine instructions on same page?
Rajiv
-
Hi there
(1) This doesn't look correct to me as you are using apostrophes instead of quotations. I would look at this resource here from Google and follow their directions.
(2) Unforunately no, Bing uses language meta tags - not hreflang tags
(3) That shouldn't have anything to do with it. Make sure your site's sitemap is complete and accurate, uploaded to both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, and also make sure you have no robots.txt or meta tag issues.
Keep in mind that using automated translator services could be a potentially bad user experience
(4) First - don't use translators from Google or Bing - hire a content writer that can write unique content for the audience and translate it for the audiences you are looking to serve. I would recommend setting up a unique URL structure for different regional focus areas, utilizing hreflang tags and language meta tags, setting up Webmaster Tools accounts for those URLs, and geotargeting them - IF you are doing international SEO. If not, then simply utilize the hreflang tags and language tags.
If you plan on doing International SEO, take a look at these resources:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)
5 Dos and Don'ts of International SEO - Whiteboard Friday (Moz)Let me know if these answered your questions! Hope this all helps - good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Urgent: Any point having /au version of the website for Australia?
Hi, We just migrated our website from /uk to the global one (but we still kept /us). We are expanding our business to Australia. Is there any point having the global .com site duplicated as .com/au provided the content will be identical? What's the /au impact on the domain strength and rank in Australia in comparison to having just .com. Is there any point? Anyone has direct experience? What's the best practice? Many thanks for the answers. Katarina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
Multilingual Sitemaps
Hey there, I have a site with many languages. So here are my questions concerning the sitemaps. The correct way of creating a sitemap for a multilingual site is as followed ( by the official blog of Google ) <urlset xmlns="</span>http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> http://www.example.com/loc> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="</span>http://www.example.com/"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="</span>http://www.example.com/de"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="</span>http://www.example.com/fr"/><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" fr"="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" de"="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.example.com="" "="" target="_blank"></xhtml:link><a href=" http:="" www.sitemaps.org="" schemas="" sitemap="" 0.9"="" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></urlset> **So here is my first question. My site has over 200.000 pages that all of them support around 5-6 languages. Am I suppose to do this example 200.000 times?****My second question is. My root domain is www.example.com but this one redirects with 301 to www.example.com/en should the sitemap be at ****www.example.com/sitemap.xmlorwww.example.com/en/sitemap.xml ???****My third question is as followed. On WMT do I submit my sitemap in all versions of my site? I have all my languages there.**Thanks in advance for taking the time to respond to this thread and by creating it I hope many people will solve their own questions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
A new website issue
Hello everybody,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtmaster
I have started a new website 22 days ago at the beginning of this month and i have long articles. I think this should make the site appear in search results for long tail keywords even if they are not very relevant but as you can see in the attached image from my webmaster tools the impression count has suddenly increased to 100 then significantly decreased again. Even when i cancel "filter" option. Is this normal for a 3 weeks old website? or there is something i have to check? thanks. cLMa04l.jpg0 -
Moving half my website to a new website: 301?
Good Morning! We currently have two websites which are driving all of our traffic. Our end goal is to combine the two and fold them into each other. Can I redirect the duplicate content from one domain to our main domain even though the URL's are different. Ill give an example below. (The domains are not the real domains). The CEO does not want to remove the other website entirely yet, but is willing to begin some sort of consolidation process. ABCaddiction.com is the main domain which covers everything from drug addiction to dual diagnosis treatment. ABCdualdiagnosis.com is our secondary website which covers everything as well. Can I redirect the entire drug addiction half of the website to ABCaddiction.com? With the eventual goal of moving everything together.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Google don't index .ee version of a website
Hello, We have a problem with our clients website .ee. This website was developed by another company and now we don't know what is wrong with it. If i do a Google search "site:.ee" it only finds konelux.ee homepage and nothing else. Also homepage title tag and meta dec is in Finnish language not in Estonian language. If i look at .ee/robots.txt it looks like robots.txt don't block Google access. Any ideas what can be wrong here? BR, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sfinance0 -
Best option for Affiliate links on your website?
Hello! I have a website which is completely affiliate based. What is the best option for the links on-page? Examples would be: affiliate.website.com/12901730?2=3532523=user12342901730?2=3532523=user?Whittie www.website.com/affiliate=user?Whittie=load-of-tracking=date=blah=blaH?blah And So on... Which look ugly as sin when you hover over the Anchor Text. Ideally I would like a 301 redirect to mysite.com/goto/affiliatename, which would then have a rel nofollow. This way I could also track the exit pages via Analytics too guess, which I've not currently got set up and i'm desperate for it to be done. Does this method effect anything on search engines though? I've seen mixed report, but going back to 2011 which is too long ago in the SEO world. Another option is to use the likes of "Bit.ly" or use another domain and host 301s on there? The new bit.ly integration from moz might come in handy here. Please advise on the subject, I really appreciate any help on this, as i'm at a brick wall. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Whittie0 -
Why did this website disappear from Google's SERPs?
For the first several months this website, WEBSITE, ranked well in Google for several local search terms like, "Columbia MO spinal decompression" and "Columbia, MO car accident therapy." Recently the website has completely disappeared from Google's SEPRs. It does not even exist when I copy and paste full paragraphs into Google's search bar. The website still ranks fine in Bing and Yahoo, but something happened that caused it to be removed from Google. Beside for optimizing the meta data, adding headers, alt tags, and all of the typical on-page SEO stuff, we did create a guest post for a relevant, local blog. Here is the post: Guest Post. The post's content is 100% unique. I realize the post has way to many internal/external links, which we definitely did not recommend, but can anyone find a reason why this website was removed from Google's SERPs? And possibly how we should go about getting it back into Google's SERPs? Thanks in advance for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
Are there any SEO Tips before killing a website?
Hey guys, My company acquired another company, and after a couple of months we decided to completely kill their website. I'm not finding any info about SEO best practices for this type of situation. From the "switching domains" and "new sites" articles and blog posts I can extrapolate that I should: 301 redirect their home page to ours Look at specific pages with good authority that relate to our pages and 301 them. Look at the strongest backlinks to their site and try to change them to point to our site. Create a 404 page for the rest of their webpages that tells them that we acquired the company (hopefully with a main menu and search bar) Any other suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nrv0