Bi-lingual website.

MojoMaker

Guys, help would be much appreciated - not a hard question either but I struggling to find the right concept to enable a bi-lingual site that hits all the rights notes with the search engines. I want to offer my English site also in French, more or less a complete mirror, and I was thinking along the lines of an opening page with a simple graphic offering entry to the site in either English or French. However my dilemma occurs with the use of said 'splash' page which I know doesn't go down well with search engines these days (did it ever?). However I don't want to load an English main page and have it look like the French translation is merely an afterthought, particularly as the business is based in France - so at a minimum there has to be an impression of equality. Any ideas? My existing index page is optimised well for the search engines right now and I don't want to lose any advantage I've already gained but yet absolutely require a french version available. Search engine results are absolutely critical (obviously) so any trick to ge around this would be a great help lads.

Ta,
MoJo.

joePC

If you use the english site as the default with a option to change to french with a flag link on the top. That is what alot of sites do.

e.g. Here Look at the top left hand corner.

Thanks JoePC

mneylon

You could supplement this with a browser language detection script.

andersde10

The most common way is to choose a default language and then provide an option to change the language, this way you're not forcing people to go through an annoying splash screen. One good addition to this would be to have two different domain names eg. company.com goes to english version but company.fr goes to french version. You can also add scripts to remember a users choice via cookies etc.

hostyle

I've always liked this way of doing it (click on either column of text). It does really depend on the site design and the volume and presentation of data though. I now notice that it is also slightly b0rken on MSIE.

Serbian

The above isn't always practical however. Plus, people are usually at a site for one language or the other, not both at the same time. Go with the flags in the corner, it's the best way of doing it and doesn't put an emphasis on either language (especially if you attempt to detect the Browser language to automatically redirect them to their language).

MojoMaker

Thanks so far guys. I was hoping to be able to give the illusion of equality with English and French but at the end of the day it is first an foremost an English site so perhaps the flags will work best. At least that way I can keep the optimisation work already done. I'll ask anyway, is the any good way to go should one decide to use splash pages? Is cloaking still frowned upon?

Regarding the browser language detection script, not a runner really as too much English software in use in France and is not reliable enough an indicator to go forward, like someone says - could be forcing someone down an alleyway, thanks for suggestion though, had considered it alright. Multi[ple domain names also don't really work as there is just one identity and all existing marketing targets one domain name (it's a holiday service, not a product). Anything else I can do to cheat a bit?

MJ

mishmash

<!--#if expr="$REMOTE_HOST = /\.fr$/" -->
<h1>Bonjour<h1>
<!--#else -->
<h1>Hello</h1>
<!--#endif -->

Clearlt there's lots of flaws there, as my no means all of your french customers will be comming from the .fr TLD. Using something like:

<!--#if expr="$HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE= /^zh/" -->

...

is better because users tend to be able to to set their preferred language in their browser.

But still if you use anything like this, let the user have the option to switch in case the method you used to guess which language they'd like is got it wrong.

Another safer option you could consider is using a splash screen, which presents a choice, then sets a cookie, so you only get the splash screen once.
http://news.bbc.co.uk
is an example of a site which takes that approach.

A further alternative would be using one of the IP -> Geographic resolving services.

As for not wanting to loose any advantage with the search engines:

<!--#if expr="$REMOTE_HOST = /bot/" -->

http://www.webshop-ireland.com

MojoMaker

Getting circular here I think. Initially I thought a splash screen with logo and language choice was the way to go, but this page would have to be index.htm and as such would be virtually ignored by the search engines due to lack of content. Are you saying that this is not really as important as people make out and that it's the whole site's content that affects ranking moreso than any one single page? If so I would be hapy enough to go down the splash screen route because all my pages are optimised in the same fashion - this would be an important logical decision to make so I'm hoping I get it right. The main drawback with the "flags in the corner" approach is that it looks extremely amateurish in this day and age.

So, bottom line, if search engine ranking is not really affected by having a short, content-free index.htm which gives users a language choice then I think that will be the way I go. Shout now if there are any serious technical reasons why I should avoid splash screens apart from the usual " they're so 1997" comments - this website is designed to look retro in any case if that helps at all so a not-quite-bang-up-to-date look is perfectly acceptable.

Ta once again,
Mojo.

mm2

I'd say there was no big problem with the splash screen, but to be safe, I would suggest :

<!--#if expr="$REMOTE_HOST = /bot/" -->
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; URL=http://yoursite.com/en/"&gt;
<!--#endif -->

this will forward bots automatically to your english - content rich front page. It is considered generally bad practice to show search engines something other than what your users see, but in this case I'd say OK... Google will follow the redirect, and just index the resulting page, the behaviour of other robots varies, you might want to limit using this technique on googlebot.

If you go for a splash screen (and have regular viewers) do consider setting a cookie so the user only sees the splash screen once and only has to make a choice once.

(Does anyone know how to get an account unbanned on here?? - so I can be mishmash again??)

tadgher

Can I suggest:

1. don't use flags to change languages - you'll annoy some people. Instead, just use 'in english' and 'en francais'

2. Consider using content negotiation, while allowing users to manually-override it

MojoMaker

Good points, thanks lads. I like that bot redirect statement, might be just what I needed. I'm not really up on more dynamic aspects of web work, ahem, static stuff is my line of work thus far, so would appreciate it anyone could recommend a snippet to set a cookie for language choice.

Keep 'em coming, you've been a big help,

Mojo.

mm2

There is a tutorial, with an example that sounds just like what you want:

I'll assume a multi-lingual Web site, where the user has a choice of viewing the content in either French or English. The first time the user visits the site, (s)he is permitted to select one of the two languages. This choice is stored in a cookie, so that on the next visit, the client is automatically redirected to the chosen language without requiring the user to re-select a language

See it here...
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/JavaScript/Using-Cookies-With-JavaScript/5/

MojoMaker

Thanks mishmash, I'll have a look at that tonight. Could be exactly what I need.