|
|
How do I have both language versions of my site spidered?Dave, I want to design a website in two languages. But if search engines only let you submit one 'index.htm' on the same domain, how can I make sure both language versions of the site receive equal attention? An interesting question, particularly since my first book was on software internationalization (Global Software, now out of print). But the solution is easier than you think. What I think you're not realizing here is that Google and other search engines index and sort through pages, not sites. When you think about your "Web site", you quite naturally get anxious about having two different sites, but take a deep breath. All is well with two areas on your site. However, a few thoughts: first, make sure that your character encoding matches each language and use other meta tags to ensure that spiders and search engines can correctly categorize your site as Spanish, French, Chinese, etc. That'll help you match when users constrain their search to a particular language or culture. Second thought: don't use too many levels of subdirectories to organize your site because many search engine marketing experts believe that the further into your site your pages lie, the harder it is for you to achieve top search result ranking. That is, "www.yourdomain.com/fr_index.html" is much better than "www.yourdomain.com/french/index.html". Finally, I don't know your language skills, but I always recommend that people hire native language speakers to go through their pages and ensure that colloquialisms and regional dialects are used appropriately. There's nothing more frustrating than having native speakers snicker at your Web page and then leave it without ever telling you how awkwardly it's all worded. Good luck to you! Let me know how things go...
Related Building Web Site Traffic articles:
✔ How do I add a sponsor to a meetup.com group?
I noticed your have a meetup.com group of your own, Dave, so I thought I'd ask you: I want to ask a few...
✔ Give someone access to my Google Analytics account?I saw you had an article on how to Add someone to your google analytics account but, um, that's out of date, Dave,...
✔ Understanding your YouTube Video AnalyticsIf you're a content producer, you should already be creating and posting videos on YouTube. With millions of searches every hour, and billions...
✔ How do I claim a business on Google Places?Dave, I have several businesses that I do their websites for, but they want me to submit them to Google Places. Unfortunately, Google...
✔ Visitor information and statistics from Google Analytics?My firm is debating a redesign of our site after we got two email messages saying it's hard to read on smaller Windows...
Let's stay in touch!
Sign up for my weekly AskDaveTaylor Newsletter and you'll receive even more tech and gadget help
right to your inbox, along with exclusive news and industry updates. It's good stuff. I promise!
Categorized:
Building Web Site Traffic
(Article 3877,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: Previous: How can I watch PAL DVDs on a regular NTSC TV? Next: What's a troll and a zombie? Reader Comments To Date: 3Peter James said, on July 23, 2005 11:19 AM:
I have had both parts of a bilingual site spidered and listed on Google, but the only thing is a lot of people searching say in the UK or France will use the option in Google to view pages from their own country. As my site is a .com, the French person who does not search the whole web would not find it...as yet I have not thought of a way around this! miryam said, on January 6, 2009 4:03 PM:
Hi, how do I get the right code for an spanish url?
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!Check This Out Too... |
Recent Entries
Look for Answers
Recommended
All Our Categories
Apple iPad Help
Articles and Reviews Auctions and Online Shopping Blogs and Blogging Building Web Site Traffic Business and Management Computer and Internet Basics d) None of the Above Facebook Help Google Gmail Help Google Plus Help HTML, JavaScript and Web Site Programming Industry News and Trade Shows iPhone and Cell Phone Help iPod, Sony PSP and MP3 Player Help Kindle Fire Help Mac OS X Help Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Pinterest Help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Shell Script Programming Tech Support Video Help The Writing Business Twitter, LinkedIn and Social Network Help Unix and Linux Help Video Game Tips and Help Windows PC Help Find Me on Google+ ADT on G+ |
Dave,
My comment first. Yes, it's good to have the language code, but you also need to be careful to choose the most universal code for that language. Many Asian languages for example have several encoding settings that aren't always compatable with one another.
Not really a comment, more of another question along those lines.
A few days ago I noticed that when Google was doing some system maintanance, they had a message stating that the system was working, but it couldn't be accessed at the moment, and that it should be back up and available by a certain time.
Not a big trick :-)
The interesting thing was that they had this message show in about 14 languages all on one page. Although I couldn't read all of the languages, it was easy to see that there weren't any broken characters, ie they were actually languages and not gibberish.
Was that a special encoding that they used in order to be able to do that?
I'm using WinXP with about as many language supports pre-installed and some I installed as I can get because I use it for multi-lingual texts, but I often see errors when I'm viewing for instance, Japanese explanations of Korean words. Sometimes the characters aren't displayed correctly even though my computer reads and displays those languages in other situations with no difficulties.
Thanks,
Allen