Multi-language websites catering for different countries often pose problem, especially in regard to rankings in respective countries. However, there are ways and means by which you can optimize multi-user websites, so that the web pages may achieve high rankings in respective countries. The following paragraphs will tell you how to do it.
Optimize the URL Structure of The Website
You can do it in two ways – either by using unique country domains or by creating distinctive sub domain for each country. As for the former, the ideal way of intimating Google that a segment of your website caters to a particular country will be to build a self-supporting website for the country. This may go like this » Amazon.co.uk for United Kingdom, Amazon.de for Germany, etc. Of course, Google is in favor dedicated country code top level domains as the preferred alternatives for websites that are meant for different languages.As for the latter, if you do not intend to use country code top level domains, you can jolly well create distinctive sub domain for each language. For instance, you can use de.amazon.com, fr.amazon.com, en.amazon.com, etc. Since a sub domain has little to do with the main domain, it will be relatively easy for search engine crawlers to index the sub domain as a country specific part of the website.
Also, if you go by the book, you may use sub directories (amazon.com/de, amazon.com/en, etc) or URL parameters (&lang=de, &lang=en) to direct search engine robots to the sundry language versions of the website. However, this may confuse search engine robots as a result of which your web pages will get lower rankings for no fault of theirs.
Intimate Search Engine Robots About Your Sundry Language Versions
The rel=’alternate’ attribute will enable you to tell search engines that a web page is available in several different language versions. For example, you may include the following to the head section of a web page if that page is available in English, German and French:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://en.example.com” hreflang=”en” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://de.example.com” hreflang=”ge” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://.fr.example.com” hreflang=”fr” />
All other languages can be directed to the default version of your website:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com” hreflang=”x-default” />
Also, when creating different versions of your website for different languages, do some transliteration, as different countries have different cultures. Things that look fine in one country may not suit in another country.
Take the Help of An International SEO Tool
To be precise, create your SEO profiler account right away. It is a full-featured SEO tool which will help you obtain better rankings on Google in sundry languages. As a matter of fact, SEO profiler supports 68 different countries/ regions belonging to our lonely planet.
Conclusion
Multilingual/multiregional SEO is dynamic, meaning that it is ever changing. Whatever strategy we are using today may undergo sea change tomorrow. As a matter of fact, the internet has not only brought countries and nations much closer, it is also unifying different customs and traditions like never before. So a day is soon coming when people all over the world will comprehend and use one language for expressing their views on topics that interest most. In that case, we may not have to bother about multilingual websites at all.