Lightbox on Home Page for Geo-Targeting

[MedThinkCommunications]

Hi -- I have a client with various international versions of their site.  By adding a lightbox to their U.S. home page enabling the user to select their preferred translation (and cookie them)....does this have any negative SEO implications?  It seems like a better alternative than the splash page they were using, but just want to be sure.

Thanks!

[Highland]

Depends how you have your lightbox set up. Is it an element within the page? If so, then spiders should pick it up. if it's AJAX or something else (like Flash) you might have some issues.

Be sure your translations have a defined URL stricture (i.e. domain.com/en, domain.com/fr, etc) so bots can spider them.

[katemorris]

What Highland said, but also ...

If you add a langage element, make it a crawlable parameter. You want to be able to tell the search engines that those parameters mean language. This is possible in webmaster tools.

Also worth noting is that if a site is translated, it does not mean it is internationally targeted. Not everyone that speaks spanish lives in Spain. Just keep that in mind. Starting with translation is best, but do not think that translating means that you are targeting different countries. More work needs to be done there.

Many sites do fine having one site (.com) and translating into the most popular langages. Due to their global nature, their site ranks fine without country targeting. It's up to your market to determine what is best and if country targeting is necessary.