If doing a CEO on a website can be complex as is approaching a multilingual project is even more difficult.
I will now share the main steps that I generally apply when dealing with these situations.
I say upfront that this type of ICAO project is not suitable for beginners but I will do my best to
explain it as clear as possible.
I have always been attracted to multilingual projects because I believe that from the scalability point
of view cloning a business of one language into another one can bring great advantages without much
effort.
Considering that the markets can also be very different it should be noted that the process begins with
searches for keywords.
But if you already have a Web site is it enough to just translated Well it's not that simple.
First of all consider that each language has its own ways and preferences.
So a literal translation may be correct but the public might use query terms with slightly different
synonyms or expressions.
For example laptops can be translated into Italian in computer port a TV port a TV or even notebook
but they are completely different key words.
You may find that they have different conversion rates even if the literal meaning is the same.
Then you should know that for European websites the question of accent in the volumes evaluation must
be considered too.
For Italy the estimated traffic costs for Costa Hidalgo with an accent may different from coast you
Fidelio and cost de Pattillo without accents.
They are different in form and grammatically incorrect but people can use them in a web search and this
is the only thing that counts from an NCO perspective.
Although Google is able to understand that they are exactly the same thing.
Having defined the keyword research topic let's now check how the website should be structured.
My students think about particular architectures with creativity but personally I reduce everything
to three options separate domains use a national domain for each language for example site to dot I.T.
site dot F R and site dot d e subdomains use a subdomain of the main dot com domain for each language.
For example I T dot site dot com deed on site dot com F are dot site dot com sub folders use a sub folder
of the main dot com domain for each language for example Web site dot com slash I.T. Web site dot com
slash d e Web site dot com slash F R I remind you that a penalty but also a strong CEO boost in cases
one into will be limited respectively to the separate domain and to the subdomain while in case 3 it
will extend to all sub folders and therefore to the entire project beyond any technical implementation
difficulties if the domain is a dot com and it is your brand then I do not recommend using national
domains to disperse your strength but I suggest solution 2 or 3 if instead you use an EMT exact match
domain then with solution 1 you will be able to translate the domain name and use national extensions
to have a competitive advantage in my projects I always assign each language version to a particular
server with a geo localized IP address for example a Finnish site will have an IP located in Finland
while a German project will have an IP in Germany and so on.
I report below on the performance of a Spanish Web site of mine within dot e s extension and a geo localized
IP in Spain let's move on to the contents.
Who should I hire for the translation of my web site into another language.
I do not even consider automatic translation of Google Translate or other automatic services because
in addition to providing about a user experience they can lead to syntax or grammar errors with the
experience of having had over sixty five different suppliers in the past 10 years.
Today in my project I rely on freelance translators exclusively native speakers because even if I it
may seem old fashioned I believe that for a U.S. project a highly trained Italian translator will never
match the work of a native English speaker especially if I am dealing with particularly technical subjects
or topics related to the culture of a foreign country.
Speaking of freelancers I remember that in a Dutch project I had the pleasure of working with a mother
tongue translator with whom I communicated in English for the creation of Web sites I was astonished
by the fact the following Christmas I received a handwritten and signed letter in the office thanking
me for our collaboration.
This is obviously a very trivial episode but it makes you wonder upon how business relations and the
human side also emerge in an essay or related work environment which in some ways may seem very detached
from our concrete reality.
Getting back to the content in order to help Google understand that your project has contents translated
to different languages there is the famous H ref Lange tag that specifies the language used on the current
web page by indicating the user ls of all the other translated versions.
Google will be able to provide the user with the most appropriate web page based on their language based
on.
Also geo location IP browser preferences and other data.
Link RTL equals alternate H ref equals HDD DP colon slash slash example dot com slash E N H ref Lang
equals E S dash M X slash.
In this example it is clear that the specified U.R.L. is in Spanish but the notation contains two entities
language and region.
For example H ref Lang equals E S dash M X refers to Spanish in Mexico.
The language format is ISO sixty nine dash one.
Well for the region the ISO 3 1 6 6 dash 1 Alpha 2 standard is used in order to avoid mistakes.
I often point out for my students that there is no H ref Lang equals E N Dash U K but only 8 ref Lang
equals E N Dash B.
I understand that this is a complex topic but the main thing to know is that you will have to insert
the link Rel equals alternate with all the languages in which this page has been translated with the
relative you are ls in the head section of the web page.
We also need to add an H ref Lang equals x dash default which will be the main version if the page hasn't
a language version for a specific foreign visitor the H ref Lang tags alternative linguistic version
and canonical official slash canonical content version are added to the head section.
But remember that in my opinion the correct way to make them co-exist is only the following the canonical
tag of the Spanish version must point to itself and not to the English version.
As I often see in some incorrect implementations.
As for non HDMI all files such as PD f documents you can specify the language in the HDTV header as
follows.
Link H2 DP s colon slash slash e s dot example dot com slash file dash e s dot PD f Rel equals alternate
H ref Lang equals E S or H DTP colon slash slash n dot example dot com slash file dash.
End up EDF Rel equals alternate H ref Lang equals E N.
Note that these are only signals for search engines and not obligations and they will be free to either
follow them or not.
At your absolute discretion I would like to conclude this topic by reassuring you that there are special
plugins to simplify the management of multilingual projects because manual management in some cases
is really complex.
Plus it could and would cause various human errors just to give an overall example consider than in
WordPress.
There are various solutions but w PML is probably the most frequently used because it not only allows
the management of SEO aspects but also of operational one.