Translating Page Titles & Page Descriptions

[DanielFreedman]

I am working on a site that will be published in the original English, with localized versions in French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. All the versions will use the English information architecture.

As part of the process, we will be translating the page the titles and page descriptions.

Translation quality will be outstanding. The client is a translation company.  Each version will get at least four pairs of eyes including expert translators, editors, QA experts and proofreaders.

My question is what special SEO  instructions should be issued to translators re: the page titles and page descriptions. (We have to presume the translators know nothing about SEO.)

I was thinking of:

• stick to the character counts for titles and descriptions
• make sure the title and description work together
• avoid over repetition of keywords page titles (over-optimization peril)
• think of the descriptions as marketing copy
• try to repeat some title phrases in the description (to get the bolding and promote click though)

That's the micro stuff.

The macro stuff:

We haven't done extensive keyword research for the other languages. Most of the clients are in the US. The other language versions are more a demo of translation ability than looking for clients elsewhere. Are we missing something big here?

[cfguti]

Hi Daniel,

You're right with the micro stuff, I'll give the translators a map with the URLs and the main keyword (because of the importance of the keyword in the URL and a structure of the Title, description, etc like "main keyword | Brand Name" or something similar.

It'll be easier for the traductors to foollow up all and the best way to verify the kw that you want to optimize.

Hope it helps.

Cheers