Multilingual Sites: Okay from an SEO Perspective?

schttrj

schttrj

Regular Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2011
Messages
497
Reaction score
169
Website
twitter.com
Is it okay to host multilingual content on the same blog? No duplicate content but say, one article is in English and another in Spanish. Different articles, different URLs. What do you think about this? What are the best practices?
 
Advertise on BHW
Think of this from a regular user's perspective - I love your blog and come to read an article every day. Suddenly, I see a Spanish article that goes over my head because I don't understand the language. I open it and close it instantly increasing your bounce rate.

The more Spanish articles you post, the weirder I feel and stop reading.

If it negatively impacts the average user, it will have a negative impact on Google as well.

If you can figure out a way to separate the two so that if I am a native Spanish speaker and want to read it in Spanish, maybe that would help but this has to be done somehow without annoying the English readers.
 
TheGreyMatter said:
Think of this from a regular user's perspective - I love your blog and come to read an article every day. Suddenly, I see a Spanish article that goes over my head because I don't understand the language. I open it and close it instantly increasing your bounce rate.

The more Spanish articles you post, the weirder I feel and stop reading.

If it negatively impacts the average user, it will have a negative impact on Google as well.

If you can figure out a way to separate the two so that if I am a native Spanish speaker and want to read it in Spanish, maybe that would help but this has to be done somehow without annoying the English readers.
Click to expand...
Isn’t there a plug-in for WordPress that let’s you have the option to read an article in different languages? Like clicking on a Flag to switch county’s ? Like some pages do like page.com/en and page.com/es

In that case it would only be a benefit because native speakers that did not learn a different language could also read the Blog
 
Expanding your website to different languages will do help to target more locations & a bigger audience,
You'll have to use hreflangs, separate and translate blog/category & different kind of other pages for other languages,
You can set most of these using a WordPress plugin like WPML or TranslatePress and it really covers all of the needed work/changes,
From the SEO point of view, it works just fine and you can target different keywords in the targetted languages

TheGreyMatter said:
Think of this from a regular user's perspective - I love your blog and come to read an article every day. Suddenly, I see a Spanish article that goes over my head because I don't understand the language. I open it and close it instantly increasing your bounce rate.

The more Spanish articles you post, the weirder I feel and stop reading.

If it negatively impacts the average user, it will have a negative impact on Google as well.

If you can figure out a way to separate the two so that if I am a native Spanish speaker and want to read it in Spanish, maybe that would help but this has to be done somehow without annoying the English readers.
Click to expand...
This is far away from being a multilingual website/blog,
It does have a separate language page(s) that do contains the specific language posts/pages
 
should I create a new WP installation as a subdirectory or only creating a category will do?
 
Are you on elementor by any chance? Maybe gutenberg? With translatepress you can hide different languages or show the matching language based on user.
 
schttrj said:
should I create a new WP installation as a subdirectory or only creating a category will do?
Click to expand...


are you a news site?!

i suggest use the category concept and once a user goes into a certain language category, he does not see other languages.
 
fb3003 said:
are you a news site?!

i suggest use the category concept and once a user goes into a certain language category, he does not see other languages.
Click to expand...
No, I am not a news site, but Google suggests using subdirectories. Categories will probably not do.
 
schttrj said:
No, I am not a news site, but Google suggests using subdirectories. Categories will probably not do.
Click to expand...
sub directories = much higher maintenance on your side. you willing to do that?
 
schttrj said:
yes, it does mean higher amount of work. I am curious, are you sure categories will work?
Click to expand...
can you provide a comparable example of your site? you mentioned that you are not a news site, however, you have blog posts in different languages. would like to see a comparable example. to me it does not make sense from making money perspective
 
TheGreyMatter said:
Think of this from a regular user's perspective - I love your blog and come to read an article every day. Suddenly, I see a Spanish article that goes over my head because I don't understand the language. I open it and close it instantly increasing your bounce rate.

The more Spanish articles you post, the weirder I feel and stop reading.

If it negatively impacts the average user, it will have a negative impact on Google as well.

If you can figure out a way to separate the two so that if I am a native Spanish speaker and want to read it in Spanish, maybe that would help but this has to be done somehow without annoying the English readers.
Click to expand...
TranslatePress offers this, you can show different article on the same page for anyone who clicks on the language through a little flags language menu.

Also offers the ability for backlinks, images etc..

Cool feature is the auto translate option which uses DeepL API to translate all pages in any language you like
 
fb3003 said:
can you provide a comparable example of your site? you mentioned that you are not a news site, however, you have blog posts in different languages. would like to see a comparable example. to me it does not make sense from making money perspective
Click to expand...
It's not my site but my client's. So have to incorporate this even if it does not make any sense. Just making sure that it is still done the right way.

For example, let's say we are running a blog. And 10 articles posted on it are in English and another 5 are posted in Spanish. There are no specific categories for the Spanish content. They are being posted in the same categories as are the English content. So we have the option of creating a whole separate subdirectory for the Spanish content (which probably Google suggests and is a lot of work) or we can create a silo inside the same blog subdirectory. Therein lies the dilemma.

SpiralHat said:
TranslatePress offers this, you can show different article on the same page for anyone who clicks on the language through a little flags language menu.

Also offers the ability for backlinks, images etc..

Cool feature is the auto translate option which uses DeepL API to translate all pages in any language you like
Click to expand...

Yeah, but we have Spanish writers in the team and we would like to create separate URLs for the Spanish content. I don't how TranslatePress works though. Will have to give it a look.
 
schttrj said:
It's not my site but my client's. So have to incorporate this even if it does not make any sense. Just making sure that it is still done the right way.

For example, let's say we are running a blog. And 10 articles posted on it are in English and another 5 are posted in Spanish. There are no specific categories for the Spanish content. They are being posted in the same categories as are the English content. So we have the option of creating a whole separate subdirectory for the Spanish content (which probably Google suggests and is a lot of work) or we can create a silo inside the same blog subdirectory. Therein lies the dilemma.



Yeah, but we have Spanish writers in the team and we would like to create separate URLs for the Spanish content. I don't how TranslatePress works though. Will have to give it a look.
Click to expand...
This is also possible with the plugin
 
There are some plugins in WordPress that let’s you have the option to read an article in different languages? Like clicking on a Flag to switch to another language which you want to add. I.E its work like sample.com/en and sample.com/es
 
wecreative said:
There are some plugins in WordPress that let’s you have the option to read an article in different languages? Like clicking on a Flag to switch to another language which you want to add. I.E its work like sample.com/en and sample.com/es
Click to expand...

Yeah wpml, polylang and translatepress all have this but translatepress also offers on switch to language based on ip/browser which can be good
 
multilingual content is hard work, especially if they are all on the same page
It is better to use a subdomain and put a good content with a second language in it. The problem with this is that it takes up a lot of space and may cause problems.
 
The best approach is to keep the multilingual content on it's respective directory/domain.

Wrong:
English: domain.com/blog/english-blog
Spanish: domain.com/blog/spanish-blog

Good:
English: domain.com/blog/english-blog
Spanish: domain.com/es/blog/spanish-blog or domain.es/blog/spanish-blog

Don't forget to use the hreflang tag in the header to notify crawler/browser about the language of the page.
Like this: <link rel="alternate" href="https://www.domain.com/en-es/" hreflang="en-es" />
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Networking Downloads

Marketplace

Content / Copywriting Hosting Images, Logos & Videos Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design Misc

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping

BlackHatWorld

BHW Merch Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge Dispute Resolution

Other

Domain Name Forum IM Journeys Web Hosting Newsletter
Back
Top
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features and essential functions on BlackHatWorld and other forums. These functions are unrelated to ads, such as internal links and images. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.

I've Disabled AdBlock