Could multiple languagues on one site be bad for SEO???
-
Our site is has content in English and in Spanish. The spanish side was translated by me, Spanish is my first language, so i know that the translations are good and its original content. We were Pandalized/Penguinnized pretty bad earlier this year. We have completely cleaned our site of anything that could be considered thin content or grey hat techniques. An associate is telling me that we need to put the spanish version of the site on its own domain, does this make sense to anyone?
The spanish side of the site gets only about 5% of the visitors, bu i still don't see the logic in taking all those pages and putting them on a different domain. Would this help recover from Panda/Penguin.
Thanks
-
Hi!
I don't know why my fellow associate here is saying you have to put your spanish version of the site in a separate domain. The ideal should be for us to have a look to your site in order to judge and really try helping you.
In general, a multilingual site - if everything (paginations, faceted navigations, thin content, duplicated and substantially duplicated content) is fine - should not have problem just because it is multilingual.
The only reasons why we can see duplicated content across all languages is when, for instance, not everything has been translated in spanish. A classic can be the news or blog posts, which maybe the site produce just in english but present in every language mirror and the site has such a bad arquitecture to present URLs like these:
where post.html is actually the same post but URL duplicated 3 times.
But, apart those cases (quite extreme, even though - I assure you - existing), a multilingual site per se is not a reason for a Panda penalization.
Penguin, than, is all about links, so - again - I don't see a causation or correlation between multilingual site and Penguin. I mean... if a multilingual site has been hit by Penguin is not because its multilingual, but because it has an anchor text overoptimized link profile.
Then... a subcarpet or an external domain? It depends from your marketing needs. If you are thinking to expand strongly in a foreign market, somehow to make it a distinct entity respect the original one, then to create a new site in a new domain name (generic if you target a language, cTld if you target a country) is maybe the best choice.
But in your case the choice to have it inside your main domain seems ok to me.
Finally, to make things clear. If multilingual site was a problem, surely Google would have started deprecating its use (and it is not doing that, all the contrary) and Brands like Apple would not create their site using that style (try to go to www.apple.es and see what happen...)
-
Do you know of someone who has done a case study on this that I can look over? I appreciate your input and would like to verify it.
-
hi.
your second statement is good only if you want to target Spain as country, not spanish speaking people all over the world, as .es is countrg level termination, hence automatically geotarget Spain. Also from an user point of view, if your target in not only the Spanish people, is not a good idea, because Mexican or people from Latin America will not probably click on that domain, but yes to .mx and so on.
Also you first assumption is not correct. Google don't consider translations as duplicated content, because they aren't. The only problem translation may have is they are of content not yours and you don't attribute the copyright of the content with a link to the original source (aka: you try to make looking like it was created by you).
-
It absolutely makes sense!
Why?
Google is great at picking up on duplicate content, even if it's in another language.
Benefits of separating:
Register with a .es domain name and you can geo-target spanish speaking clients easier.
No duplicate content penalties.
Increased, targeted traffic = better conversions (more sales)How?
Just use the same design/structure for your new site
301 the old pages to their new locationsCost?
Low if you use the same design
Have to pay your SEO for the work -
Well, could you do a sub-domain on your existing website ? How do you have then structured in your website right now ? Is it easy to detect, something like yourdomain.com/en, yourdomain.com/es ?
If I were you, I would check to see evidence that the spanish translation of your website living under the same domain indeed caused the penalty.
-
It does make a small amount of sense if you were targeting spain as a country (so a country based domain)
Translations should be fine on the same site- The best fix I can think of is to make sure the information on the spanish side (since you have created it 100% orginal) doesn't cover the exact same subjects.
At 5% traffic it doesn't make time/economical sense to create a whole new site (a question has to be asked around amount of income/sales from the 5%)
Hope that helps
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
-
Country and Language tags-Running an SEO audit on a site that definitely has more than one language, but nothing is pulling up. I don't quite understand href lang or how to go about it. HELP HELP!
Ran an SEO audit and I don't really understand country and language tags. For example, sony.com definitely has more than one language, but how do I seo check href lang ? Do I inspect the page? etc?
Technical SEO | | Mindgruver0 -
Will getting backlinks to landing page from low quality sites negatively affect SEO?
I've recently started an initiative at my company to get our customers to publish a blog post about our company and to include a link to a landing page which sits on a subdomain attached to our main domain. The reason for directing visitors to the post to a landing page is to help with conversion. I've recently been thinking that couldn't the backlinks to this landing page from our customers' blogs (generally small sites) have a negative impact on the overall SEO of my companies domain? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JustinButlion0 -
One URL To All Sites, How Can I Avoid ?
I am using EMD and have an only 1 page which is the main url. Now my question is how can i avoid the penalty of submitting the same URL to the different platform like Web2.0, Article Directory etc. Please help.
Technical SEO | | seodadoo5670 -
Will it make any difference to SEO on an ecommerce site if they use their SSL certificate (https) across every page
I know that e-commerce sites usually have SSL certificates on their payment pages. A site I have come across is using has the https: prefix to every page on their site. I'm just wondering if this will make any difference to the site in the eyes of Search Engines, and whether it could effect the rankings of the site?
Technical SEO | | Sayers1 -
Linking out to authoritive sites from my ecommerce site
Good afternoon SEOmoz community. I was looking for a specific answer or advice or opinion about linking out to other sites. My Site www.tacticalbootstore.com has been undergoing a complete content rewrite. In the process we have been told and read where it can be good to link out to other authoritive sites. One of the pages we have rewritten is here. http://www.tacticalbootstore.com/belleville-boots-sizing-chart-a-97.html We have not added the graphics yet as they are being built now. This is just an informational page about sizing of a particular manufacturers boots. Once you get to the bottom of the text we have added a link to the actual manufacturers page. Is this helpful for us in the SERPS or not? Thank you for your time. Chris
Technical SEO | | scamper0 -
Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?
A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
SEO Benefit/Liability of changing URLs of a 2 year old site
I sell RV Parts online. Our organization is called The ROUTE 66 RV Network, so we brand everything around ROUTE 66. When we launched our store 2 years ago, we launched it with the domain: parts66.com We have a PR of 2, and we have been doing an SEO linkbuilding campaign ever since it has been around. Our primary keyword that we are trying to rank for is RV PARTS We also own the domain: rvparts66.com My question is: Is there a significant benefit to switching our URL to RVPARTS66.COM? Does having our primary keyword a part of our URL give us an SEO benefit? If so, what is the best way to keep any credit we have built for our original domain? We are in the process of a complete site overhaul which will launch in a couple weeks, so if there is ever a time to switch domains, the time is now. Thanks! jc
Technical SEO | | steve-2886180