5 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
5 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Is multilingual a good thing or a bad thing for SEO?

by nicolasodc
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi guys,

I have this blog, that has been sleeping for a while now and i'm willing to switch it on again.
I want to make it about productivity but also spirituality and technical programming stuff.
I can speak french, english, spanish; but although french is my mother tongue; i'm thinking of having this blog in three languages.

I'm still not sure yet which way to go:
  • concentrate only on french: i will be able to produce richer quality content, and more variety... but only in french
  • make my articles available in spanish french english. I will touch much more people but on the other hand, there will be much less diversity in my articles

I still have to decide which decision i take; but anyway, i was also wondering if in terms of SEO it is a good thing or a bad thing to have a multi-lingual blog? If i post an article in french, and the same one in spanish, will they have the same impact? will they be as reachable/viewable? will it ONLY depend on my keywords for those posts?

Thanks a lot for your future answer.
#bad #blog #french #good #languages #multilingual #post #seo #thing
  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Originally Posted by nicdo77 View Post

    Hi guys,

    I have this blog, that has been sleeping for a while now and i'm willing to switch it on again.
    I want to make it about productivity but also spirituality and technical programming stuff.
    I can speak french, english, spanish; but although french is my mother tongue; i'm thinking of having this blog in three languages.

    I'm still not sure yet which way to go:
    • concentrate only on french: i will be able to produce richer quality content, and more variety... but only in french
    • make my articles available in spanish french english. I will touch much more people but on the other hand, there will be much less diversity in my articles

    I still have to decide which decision i take; but anyway, i was also wondering if in terms of SEO it is a good thing or a bad thing to have a multi-lingual blog? If i post an article in french, and the same one in spanish, will they have the same impact? will they be as reachable/viewable? will it ONLY depend on my keywords for those posts?

    Thanks a lot for your future answer.
    I'm not sure it's such a great idea to have all the languages mixed up on the one blog, especially if it is not a proper "bilingual" blog setup, i.e. where all articles are published in all languages (i.e. they are not translated).

    At the very least you should try to clearly divide them within the site structure, like:

    myblog.com/english/article-name
    myblog.com/spanish/different-article-name

    Also you should find a tool (or get a programmer to do it for you, it's easy in Wordpress) that will change the lang tag for either the whole page or for the specific article - there are some good tips here: LANG tag

    ALSO, what you can do, MAYBE, is register them as two or three separate sites in Webmaster Tools, like:

    myblog.com/spanish/
    myblog.com/english/
    myblog.com/french/

    That may help Google differentiate the different parts of your site and also target each article to the relevant geographic better (you could specify the target geography in WMT too, but the problem is you can only specify one country, which isn't much use for Spanish or English, say).

    Hope that puts you on the right track.

    I have a bilingual site and I just realised I haven't followed that last bit of advice myself . But in fact, the site ranks fine for terms in the different languages, I believe primarily because of the lang tags. But I never have two languages on the same page.
    Signature

    Who says you can't earn money as an eBay affiliate any more? My stats say otherwise

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6274358].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author nicolasodc
      Hi!
      Thanks a lot for your advice.

      Let me answer to some of your suggestions:

      I'm not sure it's such a great idea to have all the languages mixed up on the one blog, especially if it is not a proper "bilingual" blog setup, i.e. where all articles are published in all languages (i.e. they are not translated).
      Do you mean have in the same article all three languages? Well, i was thinking to have each article in one specific language, and then try to find an easy way to link each version to each other. So basically if i want to have a subject in three languages, i would have three posts.


      ALSO, what you can do, MAYBE, is register them as two or three separate sites in Webmaster Tools, like:

      myblog.com/spanish/
      myblog.com/english/
      myblog.com/french/

      That may help Google differentiate the different parts of your site and also target each article to the relevant geographic better (you could specify the target geography in WMT too, but the problem is you can only specify one country, which isn't much use for Spanish or English, say).
      Well yes, that will help! At least if i don't target for a specific language i can try to target more for a specific country (i live in Spain so that would be fine to target Spain)

      But I never have two languages on the same page.
      Do you mean on the same article?
      I guess that if you just go to your home page, you will have several languages mixed, right? or will they get displayed only according to the user browser language?

      I was also thinking to have different urls for the same blog, one url in spanish, one in french, one in english... although they would eventually all point to the same blog, but maybe for keyword search it would be better?

      For example if my blog would be about productivity in a professional environment, have three domain names like:
      - laproductiviteautravail.fr
      - productivityatwork.com
      - laproductivitdadaltrabajo.es

      Is it really worth the hassle? and the cost (three domains instead of one)

      Thanks a lot !!!
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6274826].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author avajo71
    Penguin will love your website when you place multilingual feature on. When you make users happy, the penguin will also be happy.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6275227].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Andres1986
    I agree with avajo71. There is strong evidence that making a site multilingual helps in getting higher PR's. Many clients of mine have done so to their sites obtaining excellent results.
    Signature
    Spanish Market 101 - Hispanic Marketing Made Simple
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6741086].message }}

Trending Topics