Developing a .com in multi languages

[sc2009]

Hi All,

I am looking to develop a multi language site on a .com with the aim of ranking it in different search engines i.e. google.fr google.de

I wondered if anyone has experience with this?

Rather than use subdomains has anyone managed to do it with directories i.e domain.com/fr and domian.com/de

I think Apple do this. I need to know a bit more about how it works and how to tell Google to differentiate directories on the domain as different sites so that they can rank on different search engines.

Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Ben.

 

[sc2009]

Anyone have any experience of this?

Perhaps I have posted in the wrong section...

Cheers,

Ben.

 

[PaulGregory]

I have a multi-language site, but oddly it hasn't had any SEO scrutiny so I can't actually tell you what goes on in Spain, Russia, Portugal and China.

Most of what you want to happen will happen naturally. Just make sure visitors can switch between languages if they end up on the 'wrong' one.

 

[dazc]

you can register each directory as a site in webmaster tools and designate the target country of each. Doesn't matter if it's a sub domain or just a directory.

eg:
sitename.com/esp or esp.sitename.com is one site
sitename.com/usa or usa.sitename.com is another site
etc, etc

 

[PaulGregory]

Yes, and thankfully with directories it automatically picks up the existing authentication from the root.

The thread title is "multiple languages", but really if you want to go down the Apple route you're talking "multiple target countries", who just happen to have different languages (and for some, like Belgium, more than one).

Basically, Google.fr is the Google for France, not for French.

To quote Google itself:

The [geographic target] tool handles geographic data, not language data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it.

The site I mentioned is for a corporate with a global reach, with multiple target countries covered by the 5 languages, so we just plump for not having a geographic target. It gets in Google internationally fine, but admittedly searches for the company name (an English phrase) turn up the English-language root homepage first.

If you go down the language route, there is a convention for cross-linking language pages in the header, although I don't know what use the search engines make of it.

<link hreflang="es" href="http://www.example.com/es/" rel="alternate" />
<link hreflang="zh" href="http://www.example.com/zh/" rel="alternate" />

 

[sc2009]

Thanks for the feedback, some useful info here I still need to get my head around it all and will most probably be a lot of trail and error.

Cheers,

Ben.