Planning Multi-Regional Websites
According to International survey, it is find that majority of people like to have information on website in their own or local language. English is global language but there are also large numbers of people who use local languages like French, German, and Spanish etc. Search Engines are working hard to show users best results in their local language.
If you’re planning for expanding business globally or to develop websites which cover multiple regional and local areas than one should go for Multilingual websites. A multi-regional website is one that explicitly targets users in various regions. But if you are planning to prepare multi language site to rank well on search engine than do properly check out important factors which are considered while ranking multi language website in search engine.
Search Engines Ranking Factors for Multilingual Websites:
(1) Domain Extension:
- ccTLDs (country-code top level domain names): Used for specific countries like fr, .de, .it, .uk, .cn, etc. Domain extension is strong sign that your website is explicitly for a certain country.
- gTLDs (generic top level domain names): Not tied to a specific country like .com, .net, .org, .info etc. Since these domains extension is not country specific. But one also set geo targeting for websites with gTLDs in Google webmasters tool. Log in to Webmaster Tools and choose Site configuration > Settings > Geographic Target.
(2) Server location: Host your website in local country. This is important factor which can hint search engine about your targeted location. But still if you cannot manage to have good hosting server in a particular country, you can have your server on other locations as well. It’s better to have good server in other location then choosing worse hosting in local country. But we recommend you to find good hosting and host your website in local country only.
(3) URL Structure: is also important part of multilingual websites or geo targeting websites. It is difficult to determine geo targeting on a page basis, so url structure play important role in it. Here is some possible url structure:
- ccTLDs: eg: example.fr, .de, .it
- Subdomains with gTLDs: eg: de.site.com, it.site.com, etc.
- Subdirectories with gTLDs: eg: site.com/de/, site.com/fr/, etc.
- URL parameters: eg: site.com?loc=de, ?country=france, etc.
(4) Dealing with Duplicate Content: It is strongly recommended to have different and unique content for multi language websites, but it cannot be possible for all pages of website. Multilingual websites always face major problem of duplicate content. Websites content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. If you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both "example.fr/" and "example.com/fr/" show French language content for users in France), it would make sense to choose a preferred version and to redirect (or use the "rel=canonical" link element) appropriately. Don’t "hide" the duplicates content by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. No need to use locational meta tags (like "geo.position" or "distribution") or HTML attributes for geotargeting.
Other Factors:
- Local Addresses & Phone numbers on home page or contract us page.
- Local language in content
- Need Backlinks from same ccTLD website and local Directories:
- Google's Local Business Center
