Do you target multiple languages - Advice Please

[Kari]

hey folks

My main keyword in english gets 18k searches per month on Google with 6m results & the main players dominate the first 2 pages so impossible to rank

However the Japanese translation gets 90'700 searches and only 65k results & the main players nowhere in site !

Just wondering does anyone else target multi-languages and is it worth while ?

Thanks in advance

 

[Edwin]

Do you sell in Japan? Offer customer support (if relevant) in Japanese?

 

[Kari]

Hi Edwin,
its an affiliate site & the company I promote heavily target Asia so to answer your question they supply their service worldwide

Obviously there is a translation issue as you need to get translation pretty spot on but if I targeted Italy , Germany , Korea & Japan and Sweden in the native language that would provde an extra 832'970 searches per month !

None of the languages for the main search term return more than 100k results so potential could be immense

Just wondered if anyoen else does this

Also would a .UK extension rank for searches in swedish etc if the page was well targeted ?

Thanks

 

[Adam H]

Also would a .UK extension rank for searches in swedish etc if the page was well targeted ?

Thanks

Yes providing you use the appropriate href lang tags and set up your site properly. There are plenty of references and plugins to help you along the way for various scripts.

Start learning here : https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

 

[Kari]

Excellent

Thanks Edwin & Adam
I think I'll give up trying to rank for the english content as the main players have over 300'000 backlinks so never going to compete for english, although might have a better chance for the different languages

Cheers guys

 

[Kari]

A translation of the page wouldnt class as duplicate content would it ?

 

[Admin]

You should be using Geo targetting (Google Search Console) setting the translated parts of the site in discrete directories. This isnt a bar thread, will move it to SEO

 

[Adam H]

main players have over 300'000 backlinks so never going to compete for english

Quantity can mean very little.

 

[Kari]

I'm confused :S

Do I need to use the href-lang on the translated page or on the "english" version of the page ?

 

[Kari]

Quantity can mean very little.

True but when its in a VERY difficult sector anyway

 

[Murray]

I remember you mentioning a number of sites you were thinking of developing in the past few months

How have they been going out of interest?

 

[Kari]

I downloaded a WP plugin and 3 mornings later all my sites were attacked by a turkish hacker group
as it gave them access to my root directory

Didnt back up either so lost the lot & now trying to play catch up with another site which I think in terms of traffic from different countries could do a lot better

 

[Kari]

ok more confused now

is it better definig the language of the current document
https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-html-language-declarations

or using href-lang

 

[Adam H]

What are you doing ? using the same site/platform to target different countries/languages or are you taking your English site, duplicating it in a folder/subdomain/domain and translating the entire duplicated site ?

My preference would be the latter because presenting a French page on an native English site with English Navigation and English Declaration won't do much for credibility. If you are creating different sites ( i.e different wordpress installs in specific directories/domains/subdomains ) then you declare your language of each and use the href-lang too.

If you use separate domains or subdomains instead of sub folders you can also add each instance to webmaster tools and as admin pointed out set your preference there too.

I would highly recommend doing a good amount of research before diving into either way and find the best solution for your particular site, the last thing you want is to start hurting the original site and its easy to make a catastrophic mess of multi language setups.

 

[Kari]

Hi Adam

Its basically a landing page with the <html lang="en"> on the main english index file.

I have then translated the same page say into italian and used the main search term as the filename itself in the translated language.

The site isnt live yet by the way either

For example, lets say my main search term was car parts
My main page woudl be mydomain.com/index.html
At present I have the italian flag which links to the page mydomain.com/ricambi-auto.html
this page i assume would have <html lang="it">

I didnt see any point creating folders such as it/de/fr etc because its just a one-page landing site
and also i want the main keyword as the page file name if that makes sense
and if i was to create directories etc I would also have to have a file called index by default in that folder which would defeat the point

Trying to work out the best way to do this

 

[Edwin]

FYI, unless you're searching in Japanese on the Japanese version of Google, you won't be getting the true picture of how competitive it might be (and even then your results may be limited if you're searching from a non-Japanese IP address)

1. Go to https://www.google.co.jp/
2. Click on the "日本語" link
3. Try your Japanese search again

You also have to consider whether what you think is the main Japanese search phrase is really the same as what native Japanese speakers would think of. A parallel example might be "trash" and "rubbish" for Americans and Brits - you would never optimise a UK-targetted site for "trash" or a US-targetted site for "rubbish".

(I'll preemptively add that I'm not in a position to give specific guidance for a particular search phrase - sorry)

 

[Edwin]

I also noticed your comment about it being a 1-page landing site. If that's the only content, it's not going to rank well in ANY language, regardless of how much/little competition there is.