New site language

[rane]

'Afternoon fellow webmasters,

My company (online shop) currently have a website in Danish but now I've been assigned to the task of creating an English version of the site. The current idea is to make a www.domain.com/int/ directory where "int" indicates the international version. But i have a few questions regarding the SEOs and how they'll react on a new language:

1. I'm basically gonna re-use the danish sitedesign, altho of course change every text and graphics to english + making a new colour scheme so people clearly can see they're on a different site. Is this gonna have bad influence on the SEOs?

2. Can i use & link to some of the images (not webpages) on the danish version without getting in trouble with the SEOs? (mainly blank.gifs and product pictures)

3. We've just bought a .dk domain which we will DNS URL forward to the .com domain. So basically theres only one entry-domain (.com) - international users will have to click on the "International" graphics to get the site in english, unless they bookmark the /int/ dir. Is this a wise move or are there better ways of doing it?

I can inform that we'll have a clear "language chooser" graphic on top of each version. The main page will be a bit different contentwise but some of the shopping files (ASP) might be used for both versions.

If the above seems to be a bad idea, how would you best add a new language to a website containing an online webshop?

[bill]

1. re-use the danish sitedesign

Using the same site design shouldn't affect your position in the SERPs.

2. Can i use & link to some of the images (not webpages) on the danish version without getting in trouble with the SEOs?

That shouldn't make a difference. Just make sure that you have English alt tags for the images on the English version.

3. We've just bought a .dk domain which we will DNS URL forward to the .com domain.

That should work as you described. However, some may argue that you'll get better placement and have more options if you put different languages on different domains. If your Danish site wasn't on the .com already I would have suggested:

english.com
danish.dk

There's nothing wrong with having the different languages in subfolders, but also consider sub-domains or separate domains altogether. There can be some benefit to having country specific domains for certain search engines.

[rane]

Hey bill,

thanks for your reply.

Having 2 seperate sites/domains has been considered, altho we concluded that it would be too much of a hassle, since we then need to upgrade our entire admin-system. By having the internation version on the same domain, it's easier to maintain the shop for both versions.

All our danish users are now used to coming to the .com site since its been that way for 12 years or so. But i agree that your suggestion would be the best solution, altho not possible without having to re-brand our company URL.

Thanks for your answers - much obliged :-)

[bill]

You might like to check with your host about running multiple domains on one account. It is certainly possible to have different folders in your account act as separate domains or sub-domains. From the user standpoint, or that of the SEs, the sites look separate, but your system will work behind the scenes on just your one account.

All our danish users are now used to coming to the .com site since its been that way for 12 years or so.

Then there is little or no reason for you to make a change on that end. Your branding on that domain is something you don't want to damage.

[rane]

Before I arrived at the company (before february 2005), the company had a splash screen with a language chooser. The danish version would then be in a /dk/ folder and the international version in a /uk/ folder.

In our logs and stats, we can see that quite many new danish users attempts to find us at domain.dk instead of domain.com. Thats why we need the .dk domain now.

I agree that it wouldnt make sense to start promoting a seperate .dk domain and make existing users switch. My main concern was just if the SEOs would react badly to my above questions. As far as i know, having a language chooser splashpage isnt exactly the best way of getting good pageranks on Google and other SEOs :)