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Multilingual Websites And Search Engine Optimisation (seo)

How to optimise multilingual websites

Date : 18/01/2013

Author Information

Raihan

Uploaded by : Raihan
Uploaded on : 18/01/2013
Subject : Search Engine Optimisation

The internet has truly opened the doors to international trade, allowing us to reach a global audience like never before. English is often cited as the language of the internet. However, consider this: 75% of the world's population do not speak English. A multilingual approach is therefore important if your company is targeting international clients and consumers. But equally important is optimising your site so that it is search engine friendly. Below is a list of things to consider if you have translated or want to translate your site.

Country specific domains Country specific domains, e.g. www.mywebsite.co.uk and www.mywebsite.fr help improve your local search rankings. Downsides are that they are expensive and difficult and time consuming to maintain. Go for specific domains if resources allow. Subdomains & subfolders Only one domain. You can place multilingual content within this. So, for example www.mywebsite.com/fr for French content and www.mywebsite.com/en for English content, etc.

Benefits are it is much easier and less expensive to maintain than country specific domains and can create an impression that your products or services are far reaching and therefore successful.

Keywords Do not directly translate keywords. Users in different locations may type different things when searching for the same products/services. Key tip: carry out local keyword research!

One page, one language Do not put two different languages side by side on the same page. This confuses the search engine spiders which does not go down well. It may also confuse your readers.

Automated machine translations Automated machine translations offer a cheap way of creating multilingual websites. However, beware: due to its low quality, Google can view machine translated content as spam and may penalise the website in its rankings. If you do use automated translations, ensure the relevant pages are not indexed by search engines. © All rights reserved.

This resource was uploaded by: Raihan