What's better to implement on this case?

Hi all,

I'm currently planning my portfolio site (which will be single paged), but I'll have it available in three languages. So my question is, what's better for SE? (Please note that I'll make the user experience to be exactly the same for users on both methods, so it's just about what's better for SE indexing)

1) To have the three blocks of translations on the same page, so they get all loaded with the page. Then, the users will see the language they've chosen, but that part doesn't matter here

2) Only load the necessary language, and make links that will lead to a translated page that SE can follow?

3) Something else? :shrug:


Thanks!

 

Offer your primary language for SEs and visitors (English I assume) on the main page, then create copies on subfolders like /en/ (but for your other language) and block them from SEs using robots.txt

 

As far as i'm aware, it's okay to have google crawl your site in different languages, they do not consider this as duplicate content.

For instance if your site - www.mysite.com is in english, and you want to offer a spanish and italian version, I would put those in the respective directories (mysite.com/es/, mysite.com/it/) and link at the bottom between all 3 languages. You could also have your site detect the user's browser language and direct them to the correct page. All of these should be indexed by google.

 

If I made the website to detect the browser's language, will google crawl it in different languages? (I kind of doubt it). Anyways, I think I'll go for the directories solution Thanks guys.

 

If it's a forum, checkout Flooring Advice Forum | Carpet Forum | Laminate Flooring Forum | Hardwood Flooring Forum, we have 20-something languages all with the same content and Google handles it fine. We have traffic from nearly all languages but in this case they struggle to pass the registration process, so they're often readers only.

Hope this helps.

 

I'm not a fan of this method ^ but if it works, don't change it.
I know you can get a "google translation" button type thing that will translate on the fly, I would check something like this out.

 

I don't really like automatic translations, like the Google Site Translation widget. The site won't have that much info, perhaps just a blog aside the central info, I could use a WP plugin that allows you to have different versions of the posts in different languages.

So wether to load all languages on the page at the same time, or have it on different directories is what I was wondering about.

 

yep, just make sure to have all the languages crossed linked from each other, like on the footer of your homepage. This is how we do it.

 

One of the leading static sites in one of my niches is provided in two languages (Dutch and English). The website is in Dutch by default (http://www.katharinasittiche.de/), and has the English version in a directory: http://www.katharinasittiche.de/en/

It ranks well for both languages, so I guess that method is perfectly acceptable for Google.