SEO question for multilingual website

seachto7

Hi all,

A query here someone may be able to help me with.

Ok, a website, and it's www.domain.com

On the homepage, there is a drop down box where you can choose what language to view it in (French, German, etc.) .

However, when you change language, let's say I choose German, the URL changes to:

http://www.domain.com/Default.aspx?lang=de-DE.

So you click on one of the inner links on the German language page, and the URL could be something like:

http://www.domain.com/De/Lebensmittelbeleuchtung

So, for arguments sake, I click on the English option in the language dropdown box on the above page , and automatically it changes to the English version of the page, but the URL is slightly different to if you got to the inner page via the English language homepage.

If you aren't confused yet, I can get back to the German page above by clicking on the drop down box again to change language, and it changes to http://www.domain.com/Main/-seafood-display (but the content is in German).

So, from what I can see, the URL for any one page can differ depending on how you approach it and when you decide to change language.

So, let me assume the German language homepage is http://www.domain.com/Default.aspx?lang=de-DE

Should it not be best practice to have something like www.domain.com/de and that will always be the German language homepage no matter how someone gets to the site.

If I am trying to some SEO on the German homepage, should I be thinking about www.domain.com only, or the entire URL?

My assumption was that no matter how you got to a particular page on a website, the URL should be the same each time, it should not be different.

From what I can see on this particular site, the language drop down box is what is posing the problem, as the URL seems to change at any stage of the browsing, depending on where you are coming from.

IRE60

My take :

it might be difficult for the web plugin to convert the 'current' url on the fly so in the first initial instance it keeps that in the first language and converts the page contents to the new chosen one. But therein has the heads up to keep it in the chosen language.

So you could append that to any page to see the content change - but not the url, "?lang=fr-fr"

Id say the seo difference for a page that is blabla.com/de or blabla.com/default.aspx?lang=de-DE is fairly minimal in the greater scheme of the site

I think that the page title and url thereafter arew whar matter in every language

Also it stands to reason that each 'language' has all the titles and urls in its language (and in the sitemap)and a url with "?lang=xx-xx" appended indexed as well?

Just thought and not too many solutions

seachto7

Cheers for that.

So, if I wanted to submit the German site to a German directory for example, what URL should I submit?

blue4ever

I'd see which one the home page defaults to - but getting to in whilst already in another language, so..

Go to a page say http://www.domain.com/Main/-seafood-display in English - switch it to German, now navigate back to the 'home' page, which should now be in German as well as the URL's and submit that 'localised' url maybe: http://www.domain.com/de/ (?)

C

(then it will be the same with all translations)

seachto7

This is the problem. When I go to the English page, click on the German language dropdown box, the page language changes obviously, as well as the meta titles and descriptions etc, but the URL stays as an English one which confuses me... so while in German, if I then click on the homepage, it goes to

www.domain.com/Home.aspx , which could be the homepage for any of them! (but is in German).

So it's like the German homepage could now be

www.domain.com/Home.aspx or www.domain.com/Home.aspx?lang=de-DE

blue4ever

OK, that's not great!

Is it a plugin? or extension to a CMS?

seachto7

Not too sure I understand what you are on about there, but there is a CMS involved..(Kentico)

RedCardinal

The rule of thumb I follow and always recommend is to set language via the URL, so you're heading for trouble SEO-wise if you can visit a particular URL and that URL can have different language content depending on a cookie. Basically you'll find that search engines wont see anything other than the default language.

Ideally you'll silo each language into a folder or sub-domain, e.g.
www.mydomain.com/
www.mydomain.com/de/
www.mydomain.com/es/

The main reason the above is better than using a query string (?lang=de) to set language is that you can then geotarget the sub-folder or sub-domain to a related country via Webmaster Tools.

seachto7

Cheers,

Is there any advantage having www.domain.de over www.domain.com/de?

They do have a www.domain.de but is not optimised, and the titles have not been translated.