Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best practice for Spanish version of English website?
-
I'm doing an audit for a site that has all of its English pages under the same roof with Spanish pages in Wordpress.
It is intended for Chicago, not Mexico.
I suspect this is not a good thing, but I only have instinct to rely on here.
What is the best practice for having the same website in two languages?
http://www.enhancedform.com/ and http://www.enhancedform.com/spanish/
-
Hi Eva,
your case is quite similar to the Belgium one described in a answer here above.
Said that I did not see anyone pointing you to some important thing that you're maybe forgetting to do.
Your site is a .com, a generic domain name. Generic domain names target the world by default, and that is why you have a lot of visit from Mexico for your Spanish version of the site.
Therefore, what I'd suggest you to do this check:
- Go to Google Webmaster Tools;
- Go to: Search Traffic > International Targeting
- Click on the "Country" tab
- Control if the site is targeting the USA. If not, target users in United States.
Doing that, you are telling Google that your site is meant for users in the United States and not in others countries, so it won't have that much visibility in regional Googles like google.com.mx.
Then, as suggested by others here, implement the hreflang annotations (read the resources linked in the other answers).
In the specific case of the home pages (yes, both: English version and Spanish version), the annotation will be these:
These hreflang are telling Google:
-
This URL must be presented to all people using Spanish in the USA;
-
This other URL must be presented to all people using English in the USA.
-
Hi Eva,
The setup you describe is quite a standard approach in countries with multiple languages - and should work just fine, even without the hreflang attributes. Check this article from https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en. I live in Belgium - as we have 3 languages most sites have this configuration. On first visit -the user is offered a choice of preferred language, which is stored in a cookie. On subsequent visits - based on his previous choice the user is than redirected to the chosen language version
Adding the hreflang can help, but can also introduce new problems - you can check here how to avoid them -http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Hi Eva
Check out hreflang attributes. This should help you out! Here's another resource from Search Engine Watch.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing the language of the website meta title and description?
Hello, Moz community! I'm planning to change the language of my website title and description from English to rank better for queries on the local language. Do you think this would increase the local language ranking? And in case I need to switch back to English, let's say in 2021, would it be difficult to regain the current rankings? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thank you!
International SEO | Jun 23, 2020, 4:38 PM | vhubert2 -
How to Localise per Region (Europe, America, APAC, EMEI) and not per country as best SEO practise?
Hi SEO expertises! I am currently working with a client that initially have an English website targeting UK users but want to expand their market into four new regions (Europe, America, APAC and EMEI) keeping English as a main language. I would like to request your help here as I told the client ISO location and hreflang it will be just possible per language and they must need to localise each English region with local keywords, however I would like to double check if it will be any way (Sitemap, Hreflang) we can tell Google we are targeting per region and not per country? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | Mar 22, 2019, 7:06 PM | Atalig20 -
Which Google does a .ie website get shown in?
Hi all, I am working on a .ie website and I was under the understanding that if you have a regional domain, like .ie you will limited to being shown in a search engine like google.ie When I go to International Targeting in Google SEarch Console it says the site is associated with: Ireland Am I limiting my ability to rank well in worldwide Google searches with this domain and if so, how can I counter this? Many thanks.
International SEO | Nov 8, 2017, 6:54 AM | Bee1590 -
How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)
Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust! We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling. Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there. They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com? Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
International SEO | Mar 31, 2015, 10:03 AM | Webpresence
Lee.0 -
What are the best practices for translation of city/state names for international SEO? (ie. New York in English vs. Nueva York in Spanish)
I'm working on international SEO / translation of a global travel site. While we have a global keyword research and translation strategy in process for each market they serve, I've run into a unique question. Overall, we are translating (and localizing) content for each market but aren't sure what to do with location names. Each country/state has cities and locations that have their own dedicated pages. I see three options for these location names (when titling a page and writing content): keep them in English, translate the names in the market languages, or use a combination of the two. The challenge with altering the location names to the market languages is that they are truly not known by those names. Though there are some instances where it may make sense…for instance **New York **in Spanish would be "Nueva York" with **‘**Nueva' being the Spanish translation of ‘new’. There are other instances, where no translation exists. If you’ve had a similar experience I'd love to hear your approach/recommendation.
International SEO | Sep 13, 2013, 10:06 AM | JonClark150 -
Sub-domains or sub-directories for country-specific versions of the site?
What approach do you think would be better from an SEO perspective when creating country-targeted versions for an eCommerce site (all in the same language with slight regional changes) - sub-domains or sub-directories? Is any of the approaches more cost effective, web development-wise? I know this topic's been under much debate and I would really like to hear your opinion. Many thanks!
International SEO | Aug 12, 2013, 5:11 AM | ramarketing0 -
Optimizing terms with accents/tildes in Spanish
Hello all, quick question. We are optimizing for a keyword that includes an accent in Spanish. Is it better to use the accented or regular form (i.e. inglés vs. ingles)? Also, is there any distinction between accents (áéí...) and the ene (ñ) in terms of strategy/best practices? Does this accent issue have a huge impact on ranking?
International SEO | Feb 27, 2012, 3:26 PM | CuriosityMedia0 -
Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.
International SEO | Feb 23, 2011, 2:47 PM | Amjath0