Different URLS for our multi language pages caused penalty?
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Hi all,
We have a website www.phoneboxlanguage.com with 4 different language versions (Spanish, French, Italian, German). We have all the different versions on totally different URLS. E.G the French URL is www.cours-telephone-anglais.com. Recently this month we saw a huge drop in SERPS for all the 'foreign' language pages.
This had happened before for the Spanish and French, which we put down to keyword density issues, so created new URLS for those pages.
However now all 4 foreign pages have dropped.
Could this be due instead to a penalty for duplicate sites?
The content is obviously different due to different languages, but the coding and templates for the sites are the same.
How can we find out this is the case and what should we do? I was thinking after some research on the forum to create subfolders in the original (phoneboxlanguage.com) and then create 301 redirects, from the old dropped sites, or would their penalties be bad for our original site, if this were the case?
We are obviously very keen to not further damage the site and the original site which remains o.k.
Many thanks for your kind help.
Quime.
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Were the sites all interlinked?
Were you doing any link building?
Are they all on the same server?
If you're penalized you need to unwind the penalties. Have you gotten any messages in your Google WMT accounts?
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Hi, thanks for the reply,
The sites were interlinked, (a link at the top going to the other language pages on each)
There was link building involved to a greater or lesser extent, the Italian page not for several months, the French and Spanish quite recently.
They are hosted on the same host account but on separate I.P addresses.
On the webmasters we have not seen any messages warning us of anything.
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a) Your international sites have this in the headers <html xmlns="<a class="attribute-value">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</a>" xml:lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>" lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>">
Should be: <html xmlns="<a class="attribute-value">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</a>" xml:lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>" lang="FR">
b) I would nofollow or delete if not necessary to conversion any of the links pointing to your main domain on your other sites, including your school. subdomain login page and anything else linking to the main site. Run a tool to identify where your external links are and nofollow all of them.
You're sharing scripts:
<script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="http://www.phoneboxlanguage.com/javascript/thickbox.js">script> <script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="http://www.phoneboxlanguage.com/Javascript/dropdownmenu1.js">script>
c) are you properly geo-targeting the sites in Google WMT?
d) you saw the results drop for the international sites in their respective Google regional search engine?
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Hi thanks for the reply,
Should we not have any shared scripts, how can we avoid this, just by removing them? Ideally we need the pages the same, but with different language versions, while not being punished.
I will make all the changes you suggest.
The Geo-targeting was not done for all, but we did it today.
The drops were on Google regional and com search engines.
Would these changes lift the penalties, or are they more permanent sometimes?
You would not suggest subdomains and moving the foreign pages to the main site?
Also I have just been told that having 'dashes' in the URL has become an issue, has anyone ever heard of that??
Many thanks
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