International SEO

So I had a client ask me about ranking for international searches. He wants someone to be able to search products in say, France, and have their website come up just the same. The quick answer I gave him was to translate his pages into the languages of the countries he wanted to target. There is also a plugin that will auto do it for you. I figured that was a good start, but while it sufficed for him, it didn't suffice for me. I will do the Google search later, just wanted to see if anyone had any additional insight. I should be better equipped to answer this type of question.

GuinnessMan said:

The quick answer I gave him was to translate his pages into the languages of the countries he wanted to target.

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Well that wont work for say Spanish (Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and so on.) Portuguese (Portugal or Brazil) etc. Having it translated will improve his rankings but not significantly. For example "Sony HD television". That is spelt exactly the same in English as it is in Spanish so no translation will help there. I would recommend getting tld in those countries. That plays a major role. Also if somewhere on the pages you can write out the actual country. For example I will write the company address at the bottom of each page/footer. That helps to target the country as well.

vulzala said:

Well that wont work for say Spanish (Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Argentina and so on.) Portuguese (Portugal or Brazil) etc. Having it translated will improve his rankings but not significantly. For example "Sony HD television". That is spelt exactly the same in English as it is in Spanish so no translation will help there. I would recommend getting tld in those countries. That plays a major role. Also if somewhere on the pages you can write out the actual country. For example I will write the company address at the bottom of each page/footer. That helps to target the country as well.

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good, question, i have a also the same problem and read a lot:
pls read this and the comments below : www . seomoz . org / blog / international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

hope it will help
Stan

The best way to rank in a foreign country without a doubt is get a county specific TLD, e.g www.website.fr. But obviously building another website or moving TLDs may be out of the question.

If they already have a generic TLD, like .com, .net etc, they can geo target their site to France, or what ever in Web master tools. If they don't want to geo target there entire domain as dont want to lose rankings in another country they can make sudomains, or subfolders and geo target them separately from the TLD domain.

Once you have done any of these, then yes of course translate the content on the page to the target country, But don't use an auto translator, they are rubbish and will read like gibberish and could be picked up as spammy useless content. Matt Cutts has mentioned this himself. You need to get a professional translation done.

But simply translating you content is not enough to rank in other countries.

PM'd you

You can get the wordpress multi language plugin WPML Google it. Even searching BHW you will find where some people after Panda is ranking with this plugin and one or two says they have no backlinking to their site. So.. one must conclude Google is friendly to sites who are helpful to many more people especially more than one nationality. Many are still trying to resurrect themselves after Panda; however there are some folks who adjusts their strategy quickly by studying, testing, proving then applying new techniques to get back on top and stay there. I am a part of JSlocalseoexpertdotcom offering some advice.

Multilanguage website will not get the results.

Try with a local seo for these countries. Now I think about arabian countries, for example.