Best way to interlink 25 different language versions of a website?
-
I have a website which has 25 different language versions on 16 different domains. Hreflan are setup to point to different language versions.
In the footer we have deeplinks to the 25 language versions. Site is not spammy but in small niche and many language versions have very few other external links. For some time this site had lost rankings for reasons that are unclear till now.
I see that large international sites such as booking.com, tripadvisor, apple all use different approaches to interlink their language versions. Interestingly Tripadvisor is nowadays loading the links to their other language versions dynamically only upon click so that these links do not show up in source code, deviating from their former implementation of static deeplinks to all language versions.
Matt Cutts mentioned back in 2013 “If you have 50 different sites, I wouldn’t link to all 50 sites down in the footer of your website, because that can start to look pretty spammy to users. Instead you might just link to no more than three or four or five down in the footer, that sort of thing, or have a link to a global page, and the global page can talk about all the different verions and country versions of your website.”
But in their webmaster guidelines google recommends: "Consider cross-linking each language version of a page. That way, a French user who lands on the German version of your page can get to the right language version with a single click."
I assume for SEO anyway these links have no value, but for user experience it would certainly be better to provide somewhere deeplinks to other language versions. Also the fact that language versions are on different domains and have few external backlinks may increase a bit the risk in our case. I guess in doubt I would prefer to be safe and load deeplinks only upon click same as tripadvisor.
Any thoughts/suggestions on best interlinking in our specific case?
-
thanks Nigel
-
Hi Icourse
I would agree that having a link to all languages in the footer is spammy. Also, I guess that 99% of the time there is absolutely no need to see any of the other language versions let alone see a link to them. I would have no interest in say, a French version of MOZ and would never visit it. The fact that the French guy landed on the German site would say more about bad SEO than anything else, like why would it be ranking in a German search engine in the first place?
If it were me, I would create a page on each site with all of the different language version listed. Perfectly acceptable in every way, not spammy, very useful and completely satisfying user intent.
If there is a 'Global' version of the website - may be a .com then that could maybe be linked directly from the home page but not on every one.
Regards
Nigel
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
-
Which Google does a .ie website get shown in?
Hi all, I am working on a .ie website and I was under the understanding that if you have a regional domain, like .ie you will limited to being shown in a search engine like google.ie When I go to International Targeting in Google SEarch Console it says the site is associated with: Ireland Am I limiting my ability to rank well in worldwide Google searches with this domain and if so, how can I counter this? Many thanks.
International SEO | | Bee1590 -
Can a Global Website Rely on Browser Settings for Translation?
Our website serves a global market and over a year ago, we launched 8 language variations of the site and implemented hreflang tags. These language variation pages are proving difficult to maintain, and in Search Console they're triggering thousands of errors. I have double checked our implementation and it's not perfect, so I understand the errors. Here's the question though... the 8 language variations of the site are receiving less than 1% of our web traffic despite 40% of our web traffic coming from countries outside of North America every month. I want to know if we can eliminate the headache of these 8 language variations altogether, remove our attempt at hreflang, and simply rely on the browser settings of the user to dictate what language the website appears in for them? If not, is there a simpler solution than hreflang and attempting to maintain a very large website in 8 languages? Thank for your input! Niki
International SEO | | NikelleClark0 -
Language Usage for SEO in Hong Kong
Hi guys, I was wondering if you could help me with an SEO query for language usage in Hong Kong? Specifically, I'm aware that in mainland China it's preferred to use simplified Chinese. However, in Hong Kong, if you want to rank well in Google and Yahoo! HK, should you be use traditional or simplified Chinese in your web content? Any guidance would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | ecommercebc0 -
E-commerce : 1 site per country or 1 site per language?
I'm working with an European e-commerce; they already have a French website with a .fr domain. They want to target the Belgium with a .be domain and the Nederland with a .nl domain. Belgium = 50% dutch, 50% French. Is it better to do 3 websites, one per country, or 2 websites, one per language ? Thinking to SEO, costs, VAT management, what is your opinion?
International SEO | | johnny1220 -
The Website Ahead Contains Malware! - How to deal with this ?
Hello, I got in webmaster tools : The Website Ahead Contains Malware! When i go to the website i cant see the site and im getting a page that saying the same thing, a Malware! problem.
International SEO | | WayneRooney
I search in Google information's about this and its look like someone hack to our website and install something in the code. Is any one have experience with this ?
How can i fix this ? its a very big website.... Need help !!!! Thank you0 -
Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites
Hi I am wondering what the best URL format to use is when a website targets several countries, in several languages. (without owning the local domains, only a .com, and ideally to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains.) As an example, to target a hotel in Sweden (Google.se) are there any MUST-HAVE indicators in the URL to target the relevant countries? Such as hotelsite.com**/se/**hotel-name. Would this represent the language? Or is it the location of the product? To clarify a bit, I would like to target around 10 countries, with the product pages each having 2 languages (the local language + english). I'm considering using the following format: hotelsite.com/en/hotel-name (for english) and hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name (for swedish content of that same product) and then using rel=”alternate” hreflang=”se-SV” markup to target the /se/ page for Sweden (Google.se) and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” for UK? And to also geotarget those in Webmaster tools using those /se/ folders etc. Would this be sufficient? Or does there need to be an indicator of both the location, AND the language in the URLs? I mean would the URL's need to be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name/se-SV (for swedish) or can it just be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name? Any thoughts on best practice would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | pikka0 -
What is the best NAP format to use?
Canadian client with a suite number in a shopping center. Does it matter if the NAP is the way it's displayed on Google Maps? Canada Post (or in the US, USPS)? Or does it only matter that all the citations are as similar as possible to one another? Canada Post says: 400-3033 IMMEL ST
International SEO | | rayvensoft
ABBOTSFORD BC V2S 6S2 But if I look that up on maps.google.com, it defaults to: 3033 Immel St Abbotsford, BC V2S 4L3, CanadaAnd the client does not appear in the list of about 20+ businesses at this address.Which should I use for Places (and I assume any other citation)?1 -
Different Home Sites for different Countries but same Language
We'r starting a new webshop soon and and one of our programmers came up with the following: Different Home Sites (Index Pages) for Austria and Germany. The Language is both times German but some words are different than others. The customer would like to have that. So we would have: domain.com (No Austrian or German IP Address) domain.com/at/ (User with Austrian IP Adress) domain.com/de/ (User with German IP Address) Is this SEO wise a disadvantage? How to set up the canonicals? DE & AT Page with the Canonical on the main Domain? Any advice? Thank you
International SEO | | leitpix0