Move single-language to multilanguage

[emacs2]

(The question is only SEO related, not how to do technical stuff/cms or language negotiation)

Current Page
The current page is running on DOMAIN and is in french.

The Plan
DOMAIN will be in french and englisch, but english should be the standard language for DOMAIN. Meaning if the visitor does directly access DOMAIN

The Problem
Currently google has indexed DOMAIN in french, if i would now change the standard language, DOMAIN would be english, so next time the crawler visits the page it will see that all has changed from french to english.

Well that are my thoughts on the problem. Maybe someone has a best practice tip for this case.

Thank you

 

[milian]

i'm not sure what you are asking for help with?

The Problem
Currently google has indexed DOMAIN in french, if i would now change the standard language, DOMAIN would be english, so next time the crawler visits the page it will see that all has changed from french to english

So its going to be a problem if Google sees the main language as now English? so you want Google to see the main language as still French, but the visitors to see English?

 

[emacs2]

yep the problem is that google will then see the main page in suddenly in english? i think that will get the site deinexed for french search at first, that is what i fear. i am using domain suffices /en /fr

 

[milian]

how can you have two suffix's? Are you talking about 2 sites now?

I'm confused! ha

 

[emacs2]

its one page in a CMS (drupal). domain/fr is french and domain/en is english.
so same domain but language negotiation is through the "subfolder"

 

[Alexx11]

 

[emacs2]

yea well you can have one for each languages inside on installation of the cms , then you have a "language switcher dropdown" to switch the sites language.

 

[emacs2]

m so no other ideas? the question is how to do that without getting deindexed because of langauge change

 

[milian]

its one page in a CMS (drupal). domain/fr is french and domain/en is english.
so same domain but language negotiation is through the "subfolder"

Sound like you have sub folders, rather domains?

www.website.com/fr/
www.website.com/en/


As you mentioned in your other post, if you move all the french content from one page to another, then yes more likely than not you will drop out for any french keywords that page was ranking for, but in time the new page should rank for them instead.

Although depending on how you site was structured before the move you can set a 301 redirect from the old page with the french content on, too the new page, thus telling Google the page has moved and transferring (mostly) the rankings to the new page. However that old page will no longer be viewable, as it rediretced, so there is no point putting the English content on there. As i said it depends on where the french content is right not, if its on the home page you are kinda stuck, as you dont want to redirect that, but if its on a n inner page thats fine.

Hope that helps, your problem isn't too clear, maybe English isn't you first language.