seo for multilingual websites

MULTILINGUAL WEBSITES

https://lingohub.com MADE WITH BY LINGOHUB

SEO FOR


THERE IS MORE THAN ENGLISH

− Every minute Google receives more than 4 million search queries.

− In 2014, almost 1 billion websites have been online and nearly 2.1 trillion search queries

have been placed on Google the same year.

YOUR WEBSITE WITHIN THIS FLOOD OF CONTENT?

HOW CAN SURE THAT USERS WILL FIND EXACTLY


MULTILINGUAL WEBSITE

SEO TIPS FOR YOUR

URL STRUCTURES

Google favors content for each language on a separate URL.

− Top level domains: yourwebsite.com | yourwebsite.de | yourwebsite.fr

− Sub-domains: en.yourwebsite.com | de.yourwebsite.com

− Sub-directories: yourwebsite.com/en | yourwebsite.com/de

International domain names are no problem. Translate your URL using UTF-8 encoding

(yourwebsite.ca/en/mountainbike⟶ yourwebsite.ca/fr/vélo-de-montagne)


Hands off URL parameters! They are not supported by Google.

URL STRUCTURES – TOP LEVEL DOMAINS

PROS

− TLDs can be connected to Google’s Search

Console for geotargeting purposes.

− The location of the web server is irrelevant.

− Running separate websites in the same

language, like yourwebiste.com.ca and yourwebsite.com.au, may create duplicate

content with slight differences. This won’t

affect your ranking negatively.

CONS

− Buying various domains is expensive.

− Cookies can not be shared across multiple

domains.

− TLDs often don’t match the language code.

It’s better not to use them for localization by language as users may get confused.


URL STRUCTURES – SUB-DOMAINS

PROS

− Sub-domains can be used for both

localization by country and language.

− They’re easy to set up and can be

connected to Google’s Search Console.

− Sharing cookies across all locales is

possible, thus, an immaculate user

experience is created.

CONS

− The domain name itself cannot be

localized.

− Sub-domains may not be identified as

locales by users at first glance.


URL STRUCTURES – SUB-DIRECTORIES

− Adding sub-directories to a single URL allows you to use multiple alternate URLS.

− Sub-directories are quite similar to sub-domains, hence the same pros and cons apply.

− The only difference is that there’s only one DNS entry. Thus, hosting a website in multiple

countries for different locales is prohibited.


‘hreflang’ FOR LANGUAGE AND REGIONAL URLS

After making a decision for your URL structure, you need to let Google know which locales

serve which target users. Google uses the rel=“alternate” hreflang=“x” attributes to list the

relevant locale in search results.



LANGUAGE ANNOTATIONS

When offering a website in English (yourwebsite.com) and German, there are 3 ways to

indicate that e.g. de.yourwebiste.com is the German equivalent to the English page:

1. Inserting a HTML link element in the header of yourwebsite.com points out that de.yourwebsite.com

is the German version.

<link rel=“alternate” hreflang=“de” href=“http://de.yourwebsite.com/” />

2. When publishing non-HTML files a HTTP header can be used.

<http://de.yourwebsite.com/>; rel=“alternate”; hreflang=“de”

3. Information about different language versions can submitted as a sitemap.



LANGUAGE ANNOTATIONS

When you’re using separate URLs for Ireland, Canada and Australia for example, you may

still want all other English users to see your generic English page. To annotate this

information you can submit a sitemap or use HTML link tags like the following:

<link rel=“alternate” href=“http://yourwebsite.com/en-ie” hreflang=“en-ie” />

<link rel=“alternate” href=“http://yourwebsite.com/en-ca” hreflang=“en-ca” />

<link rel=“alternate” href=“http://yourwebsite.com/en-au” hreflang=“en-au” />

<link rel=“alternate” href=“http://yourwebsite.com/en” hreflang=“en” />



LANGUAGE VALUES

The value of the hreflangattribute provides information about the language and region on

an alternate URL. Here’s a short list of examples:

− de: German content, no region defined

− en-IE: English content for users in Ireland

− nl-BE: Dutch content for Belgium users

− fr-BE: French content for Belgium users



MULTILINGUAL WEBSITE

DO‘S AND DON‘TS IN SEO FOR

DO’S AND DON’TS

1. Help Google to correctly determine the language of your website by using a single language for

content and navigation on each page.

2. Don’t use lang attributes. Google exclusively uses visible content to detect the language of your

website.

3. Avoid side-by-side translation to help search engines determining your website’s language

4. Translating only the boilerplate text can create a bad user experience as the majority of your

content remains in a single language.

5. Be careful on pages featuring user-generated content as content in various languages may be

generated.


DO’S AND DON’TS

6. Use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling automatically translated pages. Automated

translation can affect your website’s reputation negatively.

7. Keep the content of each language you support on a separate URL to guarantee good SEO.

8. Cross-linking the different versions of your multilingual website helps users to navigate the

website in their preferred language, just in case they’ve been misdirected.

9. Avoid automatic redirection based on your users’ perceived language. It can prevent them from

viewing all versions of your website.

10. Use ccTLD or Search Console’s geotargeting tool to set up geotargeting, so you don’t need to

worry about the server location.


BROUGHT TO YOU BY LINGOHUB

ANJA OBERMÜLLERBUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & MARKETING AT LINGOHUB

[email protected]@LingoHub@anjaobermuellerRead the whole article.


seo for multilingual websites

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