Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?

[CoGri]

Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be.

My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page).

Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page?

Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging.

Regards,

Tom

[Esaky]

Why you have to create two different sites or your can use the some plugins or WPMUDEV plugin as they provide premium plugin to translate your page !

As per my knowledge i think Google will take it as duplicate conent !

Plz do not keep my word as acceptables.  I shared my thoughts ! hope for better or accurate reply !

But i will never create a two sites for same theme with different lanugage!

[StevenHowe]

Hi Tom,

There is so much more to this discussion, including local-language SEO in Korean. But here's my contribution:

1. you won't get penalised if you use rel=canonical extensively

2. Your developer is almost certainly wrong (though without knowing more, I wouldn't want to judge).

[Chris_CM]

Hi Thomas,

If the reason for the second version of the site is purely for the users, then you can nofollow all of these page to page links and just leave one followed link on a few pages of each site to the other language's home page.  If you nofollow the links, I can't imagine that you will run into any trouble, and by having two different domains you may have the opportunity to perform well in South Korea specifically with a www.yoursite.kr domain for example.

You're not going to be penalized for link selling/buying, especially if you nofollow most of them, because there is a clear and logical reason why those links should be there.

Hope this helps,

Chris

[zoicaremus]

Hi Thomas,

I would ask the question from another angle:

Would a typical user who searched in English be interested in the same version of the page in Korean? Would that page bring extra value for the user? Does he really need it?

Would a typical user who searched in Korean be interested in the same version of the page in English? Would that page bring extra value for the user? Does he really need it?

If yes you should certainly do it - you should link each page together.

There are some cases in which this is useful:

• sometimes people need/want to read official documents in other languages to be sure they were informed correctly

• for some translation purposes when person must verify the text

• when people want to learn the actual language

• and there are other cases with legal documents and so on...

If the answer to above questions is no, then probably it's not a good idea to link every page. Maybe just general link in the footer/header like the typical websites do.

[CoGri]

Unfortunately the site is not wordpress so I dont think I'lll be able to use WPMU DEV for my site.

Thanks