Legitimatly handeling simmilar keywords without appearing to be keyword stuffing.
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I'm running a sports supplement store in Brazil.
Brazil (Portuguese) has absorbed allot of English, even when a very similar word is already in Portuguese.
When a person searches for a product on google, the chanches are about 60/25/15 in terms of if they will use English / Portuguese, or a mix. For example:
Soy Protein / Proteina de Soja / Soy Proteina
I'm setting up the categories / bread crumbs etc in the store. Ideally I'd like to cover all these cases, but I don't want to appear spammy.
How would you go about this? I don't really want seperate pages for the different languages, as it's all only targeted towrds portuguese speakers. The english just happens to show up in a portuguese language search. The problem is exacorbated, becase about 30% of the products are imported from the U.S. and these products have more of a 60/40 percent ratio of English / Portuguese searches.
Should I just stick to Portuguese, and trust in google to be aware that 'Proteina de Soja' and 'Soy Protein' have a high correlation?
Thanks in advance,
-Eric
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Hi Gianluca & Eric,
Gianluca you are correct reading the question the first time I assumed it would be best to allow each language to have a chance to rank. Clearly I should have focused on a method of getting the site to rank using what must be considered normal dialect as it is that popular. I agree Google will figure it out.
In addition, I agree with everything you said below if you want to rank for a country use its dialect in H1 title tags everything listed below.
thank you for clearing that up Gianluca.
All the best,
Thomas
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Good answer and very well documented... but not right in this situation.
Eric explained well that the Ecommerce is targeting ONLY the Brazilian market, hence creating also an English version is just a waste of time and efforts that could be used for much more important issue (i.e.: branding, link earning, content marketing...)
The good answer, for direct experience, is what I share here below.
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Sincerely I wouldn't be too much worried about the fact that you are using English wording in a mostly written in portuguese content. Google is quite advanced :-), and it know that Brazilian users have this habit of using English definition in your niche more than Portuguese (just check Google suggest in Google.com.br.
This situation is common also in other languages, for instance Italian. For instance we say a lot "low cost" instead of "a basso costo".
What is very important though, is that you use also the Portuguese wording in your content (title tag, h1, body content, etc etc, if not creating URLs like www.domain.com.br/soy-protein-proteina-soja/), in order to give the most perfect semantic context to Google (apart having the opportunity of having your page targeting both versions).
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HI Eric,
I hear what you are saying here
"I don't really want seperate pages for the different languages, as it's all only targeted towrds portuguese speakers. The english just happens to show up in a portuguese language search. The problem is exacorbated, becase about 30% of the products are imported from the U.S. and these products have more of a 60/40 percent ratio of English / Portuguese searches."
BUT I would have to tell you jeopardizing 60/40 percent ratio of English / Portuguese searches is not something I would recommend.
if you do not want to use separate languages or separate sites I suggest that you trust in Google that not bad on picking up what people are typing in so they probably will get you what you want however. I would strongly recommend considering separate sites both targeted towards Brazil one in English one in Portuguese. If you do not want to that then everything below does not really have any relevance because it is all aimed towards pleasing 100% of your audience if 40% are upset at one time or 60% at another that is no good in my opinion. However I would choose Portuguese it is the native language look at other websites that have products from the United States and how they have handled it in look at how the ranking along with their domain trust and rank using the Moz bar Below this line is information that requires using two websites if that is not for you entirely after what I just said that you do not have to read it.
The biggest issue I believe you are better off sticking with a Portuguese/Brazilian version & an English/Brazilian version of the domain as well as the website. When you are writing in Portuguese if you are having an extremely high amount of English that is being used somewhat as slang I believe Google will catch on to this. However if you are getting a lot of people that are just using English you should definitely implement rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Hosting to websites one with Portuguese and the correct TLD the other geo-targeted to Brazil with a .com or any geo-targetable domain will allow you to tell Google Webmaster tools exactly what country you want to target. That way you can create both in English and a Portuguese version and not have to worry about compromising.
Here is a list
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en
Here is a great article by John Doherty
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/hreflang-markup-testing/
When it comes to hosting your website it is something that can be done from anywhere now however I am still of the mindset that the closer the better. Companies like digital ocean has transformed the web into a faster place for less money using SSD powered VPS is at five dollars a month for Brazil you are in luck Atlantic.net supplies exactly the same thing in Brazil. For about the same money even a little less
https://www.atlantic.net/global/vps-cloud-hosting-brazil/
or
http://vps.net/cloud-datacenter-locations/south-american-datacenters
South American Cloud Datacenters
- Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Or
http://www.site5.com/p/brazil-web-hosting/
you can even keep your current host and change origin and IP with Sucuri cloudproxy WAF (a very good tool to use regardless of your host I would added onto Atlantic to have no worries about malware.
http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/02/sucuri-cloudproxy-website-firewall-improvements.html
100′s of servers globally and now you as the website owner can define the Geographic area you want your POP to be in.
In your dashboard, you’re able to define your desired location (e.g., USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, UK and Brazil) and now you can choose where you want your traffic to be:
If you go down this route I would recommend definitely downloading the Moz toolbar it has updates are amazing giving you the ability to have non personalized search in any place in the world Google
http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar
http://Google.com.br serves Brazil
by setting up two websites to cater to each language using hreflang you will be able to rank for each language individually.
If you go with the .com.BR you should use the first set however the second set is made for .br
http://www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/
&
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
or
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/case-study-the-impact-of-hreflang-tag
http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
https://www.distilled.net/blog/distilled/distilledlive-london-a-few-thoughts-on-hreflang/
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/getting-a-better-understanding-of-hreflang/60468/
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2232347/A-Simple-Guide-to-Using-relalternate-hreflangx
More & tools
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
Hosting TLD's & IP's
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
Even though Google is definitely lightening up on where you are hosted. In my opinion from doing search on sites outside of the United States it is still preferable in my opinion to have an IP address in that country now is that 100% necessary absolutely not. What I still like to have it absolutely. A tool that not only keeps your site very safe and fast will offer you the ability to have your website's origin exist almost anywhere including Brazil even if you are hosted on a server in the United States for nine bucks a month there is no better product
Canada, Japan, Australia, UK and Brazil
According to the research I have been doing .BR is most representative of the Portuguese language more so than any other TLD however the requirements to get them are extremely strict and while you may have them and I hope you do I have found a lot of places that do not for some reason you can sell it they are now selling .com.BR
More
https://domaintyper.com/domain-names/top-level-domains/ccTLD/br-domain
http://www.101domain.com/domain_name_registration/br.htm
https://www.eurodns.com/international-domain-names/com.br-domain-registration/
Save money using euroDNS to register your domain via http://moz.com/perks
name cheap also offers Moz subscribers a .com .net or.org for $5.99
I hope this gives you enough information in order to allow you to get traffic via English as well as Portuguese speaking people in Brazil.
Sincerely,
Thomas
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