Creating localized websites for country specific users is surely a rule of the thumb for search engine optimization when you want to drive more local traffic to your landing pages. Targeted traffic to location specific niche sites is gold because these people are more likely to convert, signup, or become a loyal user of your site.

 

If you are selling products for Spanish-speaking people, but the content on your landing page is in English, you’re losing a lot of potential customers. At the same time, you are conveying a misleading “sales pitch” by not offering your service in the language your users want.

 

 

 

There are basically two problems with websites who operate in multiple countries and want to provide a multilingual user experience:

 

1. Search engines do not like duplicate content spread across multiple domains. Whether the country specific domains belong to you or someone else, as long as they provide the exact same content that is published on your main domain, all the pages will be considered as duplicate or “shadow copies”.

 

The result can be drastically alarming, if your website is large enough and has thousands of pages. There is a high chance that all your sites might get penalized for duplicate content and completely removed from Google’s index.

 

2. Without the multilingual markup, there is no easy way to tell search engines which local version of a page should be served to a visitor, who is coming from a specific country. If a page on your site has a French, German and a Spanish version, it is very much possible that Google decides to show the German version for all users and considers the French and Spanish versions as “duplicate copies.”

 

 

Auto Translation is a Big No-No!

 

 

You might have a doubt - ”What if I auto-translate all the content from my main domain into French, German and Spanish, register three country specific TLD’s and throw all the auto-translated content on these new domains. The translated text is completely different from the “English” version, so they should never be considered duplicate copies, right?”

 

Wrong.

 

Google can accurately detect the structure of translated content and precisely determine whether a particular page has been lifted from another page, that is available in a different language. Nevertheless, auto translated content is not so “Fluid” and creates a horrible user experience.

 

 

How To Add Multilingual Markup For The Same Content And Avoid A Duplicate Content Penalty

 

 

Consider this example.

 

You have a main domain with 350 pages, all the content is original and written in English. You are expanding your reach in other countries and want to offer localized content under different country specific TLD’s e.g yourdomain.fr, yourdomain.de, and so forth.

 

Here is the best way to avoid duplicate content penalty for the same content posted under different multilingual websites:

1. Edit the template of your main domain (e.g yourdomain.com) and add a link element in the head section in the form of:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href="http://fr.yourdomain.com/" />

The above code tells Google that the webpage at www.yourdomain.com has a French mirror copy at fr.yourdomain.com. It also tells Google that the page in French, is merely a translated version of the “same content” and it should be served to French users, when your page appears in a search result page of Google.fr

2. Go to the corresponding page of your French website and reciprocate the same thing for the English copy. More clearly, add a link element and point search engines to alternative language versions of the same content that is available under a different URL.

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href="http://yourdomain.com/" />

3. Please note that the link element should be added to corresponding pages only and it is not the same for all the pages of your site.

Let us consider another example and completely understand how multilingual markup goes to work.

You have a main website at example.com. You have a French copy, a German copy, and a Spanish copy at fr.example.com, de.example.com and es.example.com. Your main domain has 500 pages and all these three subdomains have 500 pages of translated content.

Now you want to tell search engines that the pages on your subdomain are not duplicate copies but are intended for local visitors.

Here is what you have to do:

1. Go to your main website at example.com. Open page 1 and add the following code in the section:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href="http://fr.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href="http://de.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href="http://es.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

2. Go to the French website, open page 1 and add the following code in the section:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href="http://yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href="http://de.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href="http://es.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

3. Go to the German website, open page 1 and add the following code in the section:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href="http://yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href="http://fr.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href="http://es.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

4. Go to the Spanish website, open page 1 and add the following code in the section:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href="http://yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href="http://fr.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href="http://de.yourdomain.com/page/1/" />

I hope the conceptual part is clear now.

5. Now repeat the same for every page on all the four domains. It is very important to add link elements for corresponding “sets of pages”, please do not confuse this with only the homepage of your main site.

When Google scans all the four domains and finds the alternate link tags in the head section, it will conclude that all these four websites are not duplicate copies but created for “getting found via local search results”. Further, Google will automatically return the Spanish version, when your website appears in a search result page of Google.es.

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If you have any questions regarding handling multilingual content across multiple domains or subdomains, please post your question in the comments. If you have any case studies on implementing the multilingual markup, definitely let us know.