Have one page on your website for foreign customers

JoeFlood

Does anybody know if this is a done thing?

About 5-10% of our customers are French. Do you think it would be an option to have one page on our website in French explaining our services?

And if so, would there be any SEO drawbacks?

Any help is appreciated.

grumpylumpy

As far as I'm aware simply setting up one page here or there in a foreign language would not be good practice. Seems to me that it would be as confusing for users as it would be for search engines.

Search Engine Land's post "The Ultimate Guide to Multilingual and Multiregional SEO" is the best resources that I've gone through when dealing with multilingual sites (even when only small parts of the original site are being published in a foreign language). I can't post the link cos I'm a new user but it's easy to find

It's heavy going but pretty much tells you everything you could possibly need to know on structuring it

mneylon

Here's the link:
http://searchengineland.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-multilingual-and-multiregional-seo-157838

Bear in mind that the list of domain extensions they reference there is out of date

IRE60

There are so many myths - SEO will not set out to punish your site if you do the right thing and the right thing is NOT making foreign visitors read pages in English - its insulting at best and looks like you couldn't give a fcuk about them!

At this point optimisation is about a business: UX, ease, conversions etc - my point in case - the Big Blue - same page - different language have a look.

http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/fr/fr/?lnk=bumf-frfr
http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/uk/en/?re=CS1

My advice JoeFlood:

I' going to do nothing to p1ss off potentially 10% of my customer base by making them land on a page not in their native language - I assume you in some way court these people thus their visits.

Translate a page - or two or three - or a proportionate amount that makes a French visitor flow seamlessly through your (translated) site unhindered by language and finishing with a complete understanding of your offering, how much it is (potentially), how to order it, how long it will take to get to France and at what cost. (my only point on this is get them translated professionally - poor grammar, spelling is a no-no)

From the landing page to product details to contact details - everything should scream "I know you're in France and we are in Ballyhaunis - but we want to do business with you"

These pages could be partitioned into a lovely subdomain fr.joeflood.com site and that (treated as a separate domain and targetted in the Google search console as a site for the Gauls)

If you had a local French number, or a French address for those pages - that would be so much better. Any 'locialisation' would be a bonus.

Again - its fcuk all about SEO - it's about your business and Google has ways of adapting to your business (like the subdomain) so that you can get on with your business.

If you could get a plug from the Irish/French business bureau - even better.

Think Business First!