Google Indexing Foreign Language Version
- SEO |
I work for a company that has a large site with four different languages. I'd say about 1/3 of the non-English pages are completed; the others default to English. This is the way the site is set-up and there's nothing I can do about that. But here's the problem I'm looking to fix:
For lots of results, Google is picking the French version over the English, even though both have identical English content. I'm perplexed by this because the English versions have more link strength and the French ones are only being crawled via the sitemap.
Before you say I should use the canonical tag or remove the French pages from the sitemap, plans are in the works to fill everything with content, which will hopefully help the site rank better in all four languages worldwide.
So, my question is this:
Is there a way to tell Google to choose the English version for specific countries? I've done this before for a site with multiple domains, but not with a single-domain site.
The structure is as follows:
www.thesite.com/en/page-url
www.thesite.com/fr/page-url
www.thesite.com/de/page-url
www.thesite.com/it/page-url
For lots of results, Google is picking the French version over the English, even though both have identical English content. I'm perplexed by this because the English versions have more link strength and the French ones are only being crawled via the sitemap.
Before you say I should use the canonical tag or remove the French pages from the sitemap, plans are in the works to fill everything with content, which will hopefully help the site rank better in all four languages worldwide.
So, my question is this:
Is there a way to tell Google to choose the English version for specific countries? I've done this before for a site with multiple domains, but not with a single-domain site.
The structure is as follows:
www.thesite.com/en/page-url
www.thesite.com/fr/page-url
www.thesite.com/de/page-url
www.thesite.com/it/page-url