Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey, thanks.

Hey folks,

Has anyone created a multilingual site targeted at a single location? I have a site that I need to create which is targeting users in Spain. There are going to need to be English and Spanish versions of the text.

My thoughts would be to handle it this way:

1. Geolocate the entire site to spain

2. Have the english content in a folder /en/

3. Have the spanish content in a folder /es/

As far as I am aware the same content in another language is not considered duplicate content and Google should handle folks searching in spanish or english and show them the correct landing page.

Sounds easy enough in principle but I also have these other options to seemingly solidify the approach:

4. Add: rel="alternate" hreflang="x" (3)

5. Add language information to a sitemap (4)

Again, none of that seems terribly difficult but would welcome any feedback and particularly experience of multilingual sites targeting a single location.

Thanks all

Marcus

References and info

1. Multi Regional:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

2. Multi Language:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-start-multilingual-site.html

3. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

4. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865

Hey,

Okay, couple of things.

It seems the SEOMoz crawler is picking up the WordPress shortlink. This is not really a problem and the two pages have the same canonical URL and both feature this exact piece of markup.

So, these two pages:

http://www.finalduties.co.uk/probate/mother-and-daughter-found-guilty-of-forging-will/

href='http://www.finalduties.co.uk/?p=1011

Both feature:

Explained

What we are seeing here is not duplicates but the seomoz crawler just not picking up the canonical for some reason so this is kind of misleading. I have seen this before though and will flag it with Dr. Pete as he fed back onto a previous discussion about this.

So, you could ignore this. Or, you could remove the shortlink url for cleaner reporting. Either way, I would not worry about it too much!

I added a line to your functions.php file that will remove the shortlink (and tested it).

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_shortlink_wp_head', 10, 0 );

I then commented this out with // so if you want to remove the shortlink to simplify the reporting then just remove the // from functions.php (or give me a shout).

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey, these kind of big changes across the board are rarely a good thing. If you can clean up those 404s with some simple rewrites it won't hurt.

In fact, here is what i would do.

1. Install the redirection plugin for wordpress

2. enable the logging in that plugin and it will log all 404's

3. As each 404 turns up in the redirection log then quickly enable a 301 to the most relevant page

it is going to be a bit of a process but cuts out the risk of manual dodgy redirects.

If you want to email me you login details I could take a 5 minute look at the permalink configuration for you and try to feed back on that as well to make sure you don't have any other issues.

Cheers

Marcus

Hey

I would leave the 404s if they are not causing lots of user problems, they will go of their own accord in time.

Argghhh re the backup, install VaultPress, it is part of jetpack or can be downloaded and for $15 a month you have the best back up system money can buy (daily back ups, easy restore, DB and files!).

I can't really feed back on the URLs without looking at teh backend but it would seem when you put your site back up, it was likely misconfigured and used a different permalink structure.

Shooting from the hip there but let me know how you get on!

Marcus

Hey Elissa

It seems that you have a couple of things going on here:

1. That URL relates to a piece of content on your site yet you are not using that permalink structure any longer so:

http://www.finalduties.co.uk/2011/06/23/rules-are-complex-when-it-comes-to-dying-intestate/

Is now

http://www.finalduties.co.uk/probate/rules-are-complex-when-it-comes-to-dying-intestate/

Also, if we google a chunk of text from an indexed blog post we see another site that is indexing your feed so, Google this:

"When someone dies they usually leave behind a will, which contains their last wishes on how to divide up their assets or estate to the family they left behind."

This shows the feed sites that seem to go to the correct URL but it warrants a little more investigation.

If you wanted to sort out the 404's you could always remove

To be honest, it seems you have a few configuration problems and possibly some indexation issues as well and I would try to do a bit of an SEO audit to ensure everything is all squared off and that you are not generating these URLs internally.

You are also serving up content on two different URLs:

http://www.finalduties.co.uk/2011/06/23/rules-are-complex-when-it-comes-to-dying-intestate/

http://www.finalduties.co.uk/probate/rules-are-complex-when-it-comes-to-dying-intestate/

So, making sure the old 301's to the new would help clear that up. You could also do the same thing with the /feed/ URLs to help clean things up more quickly.

Also

If we use the

site:www.finalduties.co.uk

query and then add &start=990 to the end we can see the dreaded:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 170 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

This means you likely have some older (duplicate) urls indexed. I had the briefest of looks and found at least three different URL variations:

page_id=x

year/month/day/name

category/name

---

I have probably made it sound a bit worse than it is but you should really consider an SEO audit if you have big traffic problems to get a really clear picture on what is going on and then any advice can be given based on what that uncovers.

It is likely just some fiddling around has been done in the WP backend and subsequently you have some URL based duplication (and possibly other problems).

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey, I have seen this in a bunch of older ecommerce platforms and often the this is just a case of the shopping cart or some such doing some processing and then issuing a redirect to throw the user back where they need to be.

You may not be able to easily fix this but these redirects are part of the platform rather than a 'page moved' kind of response so ultimately you are best clearing this out of your reports so you have a nice clean report and can forget about this.

I would imagine this is not something you need to worry about but you could consider noindexing these pages and nofollowing the links. You could also potentially block them from the SEOMoz and Google crawler in robots.txt if you don't want to mess with the platform itself.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey Peter

Cybo seems to be some kind of business directory and it is still indexed so is probably not one of the purely for SEO directories out there (just mostly for SEO I suspect). They seem to have a version for various countries which may be why they are generating a bunch of links.

The links themselves seem to be nofollow with the URL as the anchor so on the manipulation front this is not really looking like a problem.

As it goes, if not part of a larger problem, I would not give this a second thought.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey, I have been working like this for years and my own site uses this approach. However, I have come across a few premium themes and a smaller amount of plugins when it can cause a few problems, usually these are things you can easily hack in the source but it may break things when you update your theme and you have to hack again (yoothemes always have this bug).

So, I tend to keep sites in the root now if possible just to simplify things as much as possible.

Moving the site to a different URL / Directory is a pretty simple process:

1. Move all of the relevant files

2. Run the following queries in PHPMyAdmin (or whatever DB tool you use)

**UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'OLDSITE','NEWSITE');

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE');

UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE');**

• URLs are full paths without a trailing slash so

OLDSITE = http://www.url.com/subdir

NEWSITE = http://www.url.com

---

Obviously, back up the DB and test the water first but I have used this SQL a bunch of times (even in the last week) to move sites from one server to another (testing to live) or to even move sites from a sub directory to the root. Or, even to move sites from a sub directory on a testing server to the root on the live space.

So, it is not an essential change by any means but in the spirit of keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible, the root tends to work a little better in my experience.

Hope that helps! 
Marcus

Hey Steve, what are you seeing? A loss on just a few big keywords or a more general loss?

Hey Rafi

Okay, I had a quick look at your analytics and really, I don't see a lot to worry about here.

1. Your main keywords that send traffic are still doing really well

2. Your organic traffic is down around 19% this month and there does seem to be a gradual decline across some of your big keywords.

---

I think what you are seeing here is nothing more than some new competition in your space and I see several sites doing what you are doing and doing it pretty well.

My advice would consist of four main points

1. start adding more varied content
2. start thinking about building traffic from a wider range of keywords
3. look at ways to re-engage with previous visitors (social etc)
4. consider content that you can use to earn links or a link building strategy (content based - not something you just outsource)

Without doing this properly and anointing all the various algorithm updates I don't think you have a penalty as such - you are just facing some increased competition.

Forget about SEO almost, focus on content, try to have a broader focus, engage people who visit and bring them back, look at content you can use to build some buzz and links, look at content you can use to incite some viral activity.

Focus on your site basically and don't worry that Google is working against you.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

If you want to add me to your analytics I can give you some five minute feedback there if it helps.

marcus miller 1975 <at>gmail <dot>como</dot></at>

Content seems good but the link profile is a bit questionable:

http://www.blogvasion.com/

Really, need more info. What was driving traffic? If it was a couple of key phrases that you had a bunch of anchor text links for then... the links may be as far as you need to look.

Can you provide a little more info on just what was driving your organic traffic?

Marcus

Hey Suzanne

I did some very simple searching and found no glaring or obvious problems.

• no obvious heavy external duplication

• link profile does not look overly spammy

• you rank for a range of page titles in reasonable positions (3 / 4 etc)

I think we likely have some internal duplication

• Google this: "Our Organic Cotton comes from Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC), the largest organic cotton cooperative""

• The competition has a whole bunch more links than you

• There is not really any content beyond the product pages themselves (which seem to be well put together)

_* Caveat that this was a 5 minute look! _

I had a look at several pages and products and found you searching for page related terms so I am not sure you have a problem as such. Could you possibly provide a bit more information?

1. have you lost rankings or traffic (or both)
2. are sales effected
3. are there new competitors
4. are competitors doing more on PPC

I find that you rank really well for a whole range of terms so if it is just some homepage terms it may be that a competitor is doing more marketing or that there is just more competition.

Would be interested to find out a little more or to dig into your analytics and see what is going on.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey Richard, for us it all depends on the kind of work. For audits we generally charge up front for smaller jobs and 50% up front and 50% on delivery for medium to large jobs.

If it is a monthly arrangement, then that is generally a monthly billing cycle but I would always make sure the client is serious about the project and has enough going on to ensure they can pay and if payment stops, so does the work.

For content creation we will often do a 50% up front and 50% on delivery as well.

No hard and fast rules really - you just have to figure out what is fair and what works for you and your clients.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Hey Jason

In a word, no, no way that simple. Google are simply not going to process that disavow unless they see you (or your client) have made a considerable effort in the removal of those links. In all likelyhood, it will take a good few months and some considerable effort to show that you have gone to lengths enough to satisfy them.

There are a bunch of tools that can help, but ultimately, there is still a lot of manual work involved in any clean up.

Few pointers.

Tools worth bothering with.

1. Removeem
2. Rmoov
3. Link Detox

None of these will do the job for you and in all likelihood, you will want to use all three. Beyond that, if there is a redesign you can 404 old pages on the other site to kill inbound links but if most of your shady links are pointing at the homepage, there is not a lot you can do about them other than clean up and attempt a disavow.

You are going to have to document the whole process from putting together a list of candidate links for removal & collecting email addresses through to every removal request. I would also suggest possibly going beyond just the email and looking at phone numbers, letters and anything else you can do to show the level of effort required.

Depending on the history and any penalties you are going to want to submit your disavow and a reconsideration request detailing all of your tireless and persistant efforts.

In summary, it's not terribly hard or complicated, but there is just a whole bunch of work involved to do the job properly and to a level that Google is going to be happy with and don't expect results over night. My advice would be to brief your client that a honest clean up could take up to three months and three reinclusion requests along with a considerable investment in man hours to do the job properly.

This is a good job for an intern or apprentice. Well, let me rephrase that, it's a good job to give to an intern or apprentice, it's likely going to be quite a sucky job for them to have to do but baptism of fire and all!

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey Bob

I think you should forget about any kind of perceived conventions and have whatever you think works best for your users and goals.

Again, look at unbounce, that is a custom landing page with a homepage link (to share the love) but not the general site navigation.

They also have a footer to do a bit more link love but really, do what works for you.

Forget conventions - do what works!

Hope that helps
Marcus

Hey

Sometimes certain sites do manage to 'get away with it' for a bit longer but really, from a very quick look at their link profile, it looks super dodgy so I can't see them getting a free ride for much longer.

Really, I would forget about these guys, be happy that their is no longevity to their approach and that their days are numbered and focus on making the site you are working on as good as it can be in the meanwhile.

I know that is not an answer as such, but I doubt anyone outside of Google could give you a better one. You could get an fairly comprehensive seo audit done on their site and links etc but what would it achieve? You can't play the numbers game against this kind of profile so I would not even bother.

As it goes, it can be surprising how few real links you need to compete with this kind of profile and it may be that the competition in this sector are all just running the same weak strategies.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Yep, check the HTTP headers with webbug or there are a bunch of browser plugins that will let you see the headers for the document.

That said, I would push to drive the links to the page though rather than the document itself and just create a nice page that houses the document and make that the link target.

You could even make the PDF link only available by email once they have singed up or some such as canonical is only a directive and you would still be better getting those links flooding into a real page on the site.

You could even offer up some HTML to make this easier for folks to link to that linked to your main page. If you take a look at any savvy infographics etc folks will try to draw a link into a page rather than the image itself for the very same reasons.

If you look at something like the Noobs Guide to Online Marketing from Unbounce then you will see something like this as the suggested linking code:

[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)

[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)

[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)

Unbounce – The DIY Landing Page Platform

So, the image is there but the link they are pimping is a standard page:

http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/

They also cheekily add an extra homepage link in as well with some keywords and the brand so if folks don't remove that they still get that benefit.

Ultimately, it means that when links flood into the site they benefit the whole site rather than just promote one PDF.

Just my tuppence! 
Marcus

Hey Bob

There is a much easier way to do this and simply have your PDFs that you don't want indexed in a folder that you block access to in robots.txt. This way you can just drop PDFs into articles and link to them knowing full well these pages will not be indexed.

Assuming you had a PDF called article.pdf in a folder called pdfs/ then the following would prevent indexation.

User-agent: * Disallow: /pdfs/

Or to just block the file itself:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /pdfs/yourfile.pdf Additionally, There is no reason not to add the canonical link as well and if you find people are linking directly to the PDF then having this would ensure that the equity associated with those links was correctly attributed to the parent page (always a good thing).

Header add Link '<http: www.url.co.uk="" pdfs="" article.html="">; </http:> rel="canonical"'

Generally, there are better ways to block indexation than with robots.txt but in the case of PDFs, we really don't want these files indexed as they make for such poor landing pages (no navigation) and we certainly want to remove any competition or duplication between the page and the PDF so in this case, it makes for a quick, painless and suitable solution.

Hope that helps!
Marcus