What is the current thinking about translated versions of pages? Is it necessary
-
My company is about to do a big push in China. We can get our homepage translated in Chinese at a very reasonable price. My questions are:
- Is it worth it? Do browsers to an adequately job of translating pages?
If it is worth it:
- Can someone suggest a good post explaining what to do with the translation?
- What are the SEO implications?
Thank you
Sarah -
There are a few ways to do it that have advantages and disadvantages. Your best best is probably to serve users based on their location, rather than their language -- since someone browsing in Chinese in another country probably has no use for the China based version of your site.
I know that can be done through Javascript, and I imagine there are other ways to do it. I'm not an expert on that, but there is a lot of information out there about it.
Oh, and here's Google's bare bones explanation of the dos and don'ts of Multilingual sites: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#1. There's not a lot there but it's important to keep in mind.
-
Technically, how do I do this? Does our site look at the default language setting in the user's browser?
-
This is a big question and I'll do my best to answer it as much as I can.
First off, it's VERY important. Mandarin to English Translation within browsers is terrible (I say this having lived in Beijing and worked as an English Language web marketer there). Make sure your cheap translation is done by someone who is Bilingual and proficient in translating English to Simple Chinese, otherwise you can end up with a translation that doesn't make grammatical sense (the differences in grammar and characters make accurate translation difficult).
SEO is different in different languages, you have to consider what users will be searching for. Also keep in mind that many people will be searching with Baidu or even Bing rather than Google (which is semi-blocked in China), and you will have to adjust your SEO tactics accordingly. Baidu almost exclusively indexes and serves pages in Simple Chinese, (the language of their users) so a good translation is crucial. Also -- you're going to have to do some link building from Chinese Language sites, your English Language link profile will not do you much good.
It's takes a long time, but if you can get a regional address (ie .cn) that is a big trust signal. Local hosting also helps.
Finally, it's important to realize that China is a decently developed space with a lot of national pride. You're not going to have a great user experience if your pages are poorly translated, especially if there is a local alternative. If you want to do business in China, make the investment in an excellent translation.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Important pages are being 302 redirected, then 301 redirected to support language versions. Is this affecting negatively the linking juice distribution of our domain?
Hi mozzers, Prior to my arrival, in order to support and better serve the international locations and offering multiple language versions of the same content the company decided to restructure its URLs focused on locale urls. We went from
International SEO | | Ty1986
https://example.com/subfolder to https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder (US)
https://example.com/ca/en-us/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/ca/fr-ca/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/de/en-us/new-subfolder (Ger)
https://example.com/de/de-de/new-subfolder (Ger) This had implications on redirecting old URLs to new ones. All important URLs such as https://example.com/subfolder were
302 redirected to https://example.com/us/en-us/subfolder and then 301 redirected to the final URL. According to the devs: If you change the translation to the page or locale, then a 302 needs to happen so you see the same version of the page in German or French, then a 301 redirect happens from the legacy URL to the new version. If the 302 redirect was skipped, then you would only be able to one version/language of that page.
For instance:
http://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to {LEGACY URL]
https://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 302 redirect to
https://example.com/en-us/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to
https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder/city-state [NEW URL] I am wondering if these 302s are hurting our link juice distribution or that is completely fine since they all end up as a 301 redirect? Thanks.1 -
Will hreflang with a language and region allow Google to show the page to all users of that language regardless of region?
I'm launching translations on a website with the first translation being Brazilian Portuguese. If I use the following hreflang: If a user is outside of Brazil and has their browser language set to just Portuguese (Not Portuguese (Brazil)) will Google still serve them the Portuguese version of my pages in search results?
International SEO | | Brando160 -
Translated Videos for YouTube
We've translated product description videos, typically we upload the videos to YouTube once they are complete and then embed them on our website. Should I create a new YouTube channel targeted to the locations for which these videos have been translated?
International SEO | | Brando160 -
Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?
Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
International SEO | | lcourse
We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine. When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code). Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page. I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" /> canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page. Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?0 -
In the U.S., how can I stop the European version of my site from outranking the U.S. version?
I've got a site with two versions – a U.S. version and a European version. Users are directed to the appropriate version through a landing page that asks where they're located; both sites are on the same domain, except one is .com/us and the other is .com/eu. My issue is that for some keywords, the European version is outranking the U.S. version in Google's U.S. SERPs. Not only that, but when Google displays sitelinks in the U.S. SERPs, it's a combination of pages on the European site and the U.S. site. Does anyone know how I can stop the European site from outranking the U.S. site in the U.S.? Or how I can get Google to only display sitelinks for pages on the U.S. site in the U.S. SERPs? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic!
International SEO | | matt-145670 -
What is best practice of using google translate
Hi, I'm thinking of adding google translate to our retailing site so that we could reach more international customers. what about the pros&cons? Any experience of success of utilising it and what potential issues should I be looking at? Thanks
International SEO | | LauraHT0 -
How does Google Serve the correct language version?
Hi guys, I'm currently working on a multi lingual .eu website with 20 lanuages which has been live now for a month now. Its is a sub directory set up so the french language version would look something like www.example.eu/fr. The English language version defaults to the home page www.example.eu. When you search for the brand name on the local search engines the home page English version appears instead of the preferred language version for each Country. 90% of the external links so far link to the homepage so I'm guessing this is the reason why. We are still waiting for the development company to create sitemap for each language using the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” XML Sitemap Tool. I know Google look at a number of factors when deciding what results to give a user. Can anybody share their experience or advice here? Thanks Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0 -
Country specific landing pages
I have a client who wants to put a re-direct on his landing pages based on the visitors IP address. The landing page will be a sub domain relevant to the country their IP is located in. I am a little concerned this will effect the SEO. Appreciate any advice. Dylan 🙂
International SEO | | gomyseo0