Site with multiple languages

[brantwadz]

We are building a Joomla site for a customer that has an USA division and a South American division (english and spanish).  The products and services are the same.

I am trying to understand the best posible way to architect the site.

1- Do I create 1 site with duplicate pages in different languages? Does Google recognize that it is duplicate content if different languages are used?

2- Do I create seperate sub domains for each language?

3- Should I just use Google translate to translate the pages as required?  The problem here is that each site has a different geographic target.

any other alternatives?

[generalzod]

Hey Brant!

I'd go with the sub-domain route like es.yoursits.com and have the Spanish pages right there. In my experience, I've created multi-language sites and not run into duplicate content issues.

Secondly, Google translate does a kind of dictionary translation that may not read so well by your target audience. If at all possible, find someone who can translate the pages for you. Spanish is a common language so you may know someone who can do that for you. If this isn't the case, you could try the url below, I've used this provider before and had good results. May not be viable if you have a lot of text to translate though.

http://fiverr.com/newwealth/do-small-english-to-spanish-translations

Hope this helps,

Dan

[RobMay]

Hi Brant,

What you are talking about is Multilingual SEO processes. There are a few ways you can go about doing this.

You can either go with:

A) go with the following setups for the domain with regards to the site URL/sub-folder structure.

www.mysite.com (english)

www.mysite.com/sp/ (spanish)

www.mysite.com/fr/ (french)

www.mysite.com/de/ (german)

etc, etc, etc..

Or:

B) Or, you can also go the route of picking up the same domains name with needed country level extensions that are part of that country (like .ca for canada, .de for germany, .com for USA) etc, etc.

I prefer option A for many reasons, but everyone has their preferences

---

If you go with A. Keep the domain setup the same and build /folders/ with duplicates of the site pages that are target focused in the target language.

If you go the route of using sub-folders - you will need to inquire about setting up geo-location services at the domain/hosting level (through IP detection)

If going with the sub-folders - don't forget (from a user and experience perspective) on the site to make sure to allow users to 'choose' which element/language manually from the sites' homepage, if offering more than 1-2 languages (expansion) if you go to 3-4 or 5 versions.

This process is very intensive, and needs to be done carefully. You want to use professional services for translation, as Google Translate, or other online services aren't always accurate in sentence structure.Google does not recommend automatic translations.

If you go this route, you will also need to redo a complete KW audit from a search engine optimization perspective, so you have the RIGHT keywords that people use for that market (products), in their own languages. English isn't always a market parallel when languages are involved. Keyword translation is very important here to be successul with customers and target search.

** Using sub-domains can also be done - but sub-domains are considered to be independent domains by Google and therefore don't pass link juice' and value for inbound links across the whole site. Sub folder structures are best for allowing link 'juice' from link building effort' to be passed to the entire site.

If you go with A) - because you are using /folders/ for each of the domains you want to target for each users language. This type of setup is less expensive as well (cost of purchasing more domains, hosting etc)

Try to avoid using geo-location at the hosting level (from an IP address perspective) as it isn't always the best option for your user experience. Giving users the option to choose the language they want to use/see. Allowing users to choose the language they want to view the site in, will help them. Just becuase someone visits a site from the U.S - doesn't mean they are English (they could be Spanish, Chinese, Russian etc) and want the option to choose the language of the site you are promoting.

Remember to use UTF8 for non english language character encoding (on pages, URL's etc)

Presenting sites in multiple languages isn't 'duplicate content' when breaking it out into various /folders and then languages.

*** This is also great user experience and if done properly can help you retain the visitor and convert them into a customer/client as you have taken the time to build out information in their native tongue.

A couple of good articles on MSEO (Multilingual SEO) to help you along. With this, you could probably dig for more information too.

http://searchengineland.com/globalizing-localizing-e-business-five-steps-to-multilingual-seo-success-47127

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multilingual-seo/19903/

Sorry for the long book of information and links! Ideas just kept coming to me while I was writing!

Cheers, Rob

[RobMay]

I'm not a big fan of breaking language sites into sub-domains because you break the value of the link structure and link juice in the domain. So for every single language you break out into a sub-domain - you then end up having to build more links to the sub-domains.

Each SEO is different and has difference experience, tactics and strategy from testing and previous work on sites. Sub-folders have been more successful for me in work than sub-domains in terms of rankings and language (MSEO) techniques.

Cheers! Rob

[Hannah_Smith]

Dan - great shout on using a proper translator rather than Google translate

[brantwadz]

For me the translation is the easy part. I just need to make sure that I am architecting the system the best way possible from the start.  would hate to have to come back and decide to change it all up because I didnt think of something.

thanks for your comments!

[RobMay]

As I stated, make sure to use a proper translation service in your efforts, and not any automated translation. They never really get tone, punctuality, etc etc right in native languages  (in my book/rant above)

As well - make sure to ADD the Meta feature on each of your pages in the sub-folder (or subdomains) you use like -

And you can use this link resource to find the language code for this feature.

[http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language](Meta Language Tags "http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language")

[sembseo]

Hi there,

Great comments.

What language would/should you use for the homepage? And for what reason?

I mean many visitors will probably visit the site through the homepage regardless of their language..

I guess it won't be an option to show them their preferred language on the homepage (usability and conversion issues is what I have in mind also)

Cheers,

Christian