Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is translating my SEO meta data to new languages worthwhile?
-
When translating a website to additional languages, is it recommended, for Google SEO purposes, that the keywords, re-written URLs, meta titles and meta descriptions of each page be translated as well; or have those elements been completely depreciated?
-
Google's advice is always to do things with the end user in mind. The search engine wants to act like a person and not like an algorithm. Don't think about "SEO." Think about people.
In this context, I would think about the target audience. Would the audience prefer that all of the site's elements be written in the language that they best understand? Of course. So from a user-experience standpoint, I'd highly recommend that everything be translated.
Just in case you're not aware of the best practices for multilingual and international SEO, I'll refer you to these resources at Moz, Aleyda Solis, Google and more:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192
http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
http://www.internationalseomap.com/
http://moz.com/blog/40-plus-tools-to-advance-your-international-seo-process
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-web/successful-development/
http://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
http://searchengineland.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-multilingual-and-multiregional-seo-157838
Good luck!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best practices around translating quotes for international sites?
I'm working on a site that has different versions of the same page in multiple languages (e.g., English, Spanish, French). Currently, they feature customer testimonial quotes on some pages and the quotes are in English, even if the rest of the page is in another language. I'm curious to know what are best practices around how to treat client quotes on localized languages pages. A few approaches that we're contemplating: 1. Leave the quote in English and don't translate (because the customer quoted doesn't speak the localized language). 2. Leave the on-page quote in English, but provide a "translate" option for the user to click to see the translated version. The translated text would be hidden until the "translate" button is selected. 3. Go ahead and translate the quote into the local language. Appreciate your thoughts, thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Allie_Williams0 -
Geo-Targeting Boroughs/Neighborhoods in New York
Is there a way to determine which boroughs/neighborhoods are drawing traffic in big cities like NYC and LA?Google Analytics lists all traffic under the city name, so New York, NY, gets 90%+ of the traffic.
Local Website Optimization | | GoogleAlgoServant3 -
Do you use HREF lang tags when each page that is localised only exists in that language?
Hi, I have 2 questions I am seeking an answer for. We have a home page in english GB, we then also have products which are specifically served in US. For these pages where the phone number is american, the spelling is american, the address is american, do we need to implement href lang tags? The page isn't a version of another page in english, the page is only in the native language.Secondly, is it recommended to create a second home page and then localise that page for US users?I'd be really greatful if anyone has any pointers as googles forum doesn't explain best practice for this case (as far as I can tell).Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_PirateStudios0 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | | BFMichael0 -
How many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10 -
Best marketing for a language learning site
Hello everybody, I'm a programmer so I'm not very good at marketing. Any idea what the best way is to promote my language learning site? (http://www.antosch-and-lin.com/) Since Google Penguin the site has taken a big hit and the changes suggested by a SEO expert hasn't helped. Thanks for any suggestions!
Local Website Optimization | | delpino0