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I Have a page with lots of good content made up in german covering all products on offer by client along with basic contact details, install it on the site and have links to it from other english pages as well as link on the german page back to the english section. Submit this page to google.
Have keywords and phrases within text based links on page an other stuff such as title tags etc...
Buy a listing for the german page on Inktomi(This is really just to improve overall listing and I thought it wouldnt hurt I know its not google).
With a listing in Inktomi will my page appear in Lycos.de etc?
Dont have an advertising bugdget for any ad placement, nothing new there then.
Buy the german .DE domain name and have a holding page tuned to the key prase with some content and links to the german page(or is it ok just to point the domain name straight at the german page).
Any other ideas welcomed...
Many Thanks
.. or is it ok just to point the domain name straight at the german page
On Google.de the user has 3 options
1. Das Web (WWW)
2. Seiten auf Deutsch (pages in the German language)
3. Seiten aus Deutschland (pages from Germany)
Not only in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland etc some people use German. If there is enough text on every page, Google will be able to correctly guess these new pages are in German. To avoid missing potential visitors having 'Seiten aus Deutschland' selected, you better keep the German text on the .de domain.
I think the best strategy is to buy a .DE domain and put the German pages on it. It's OK to interlink between the English and German sites. Try to have some German sites link to the .DE-version.
chris
In any case having one page in german on an english language site is a receipt for failure:)
An Inktomi listing does nothing for your Google ranking.
In fact an Inkt listing is a very low priority for Germany.
Lets look at what you need:
- german content
- german content
- german links(anchortexts)
- german onpage optimization
And did I mention german content?
Ideally you have a german site running under a german TLD. Alternatively you have a german site running under a gTLD.
No. Lycos.de is powered by FAST, so a (paid) listing in FAST will make it appear in Lycos.
I would use the de-domain and build your German presencen from that. Get directory listings etc. and link from your English pages (don't over-do it though).
Meta name language [webmasterworld.com]
To get listed on the SERPs for "2. Seiten auf Deutsch (pages in the German language)" it's alright if your pages are on german-languaged and google will take care that you get properly listed.
To get listed on the SERPs for "3. Seiten aus Deutschland (pages from Germany)" is a much more difficult job. The language of the site DOES NOT MATTER in that case - it's only relevant if your content is hosted on a .de domain or - in case of a generic domain (.com/.org/.info/.net/.biz) if this domain is hosted in an ip-space assigned to a german provider. If your content is on any country-domain like .co.uk, .cc, .at it's absolutely impossible to get ranked at all.
You're only able to register .de domains when the administrative contact for this domain has a german postal adress.
I don't really see the need for this search-option but there's quite alot of traffic coming to sites that are only ranked well with the "pages from Germany" option enabled.
This has two reasons:
- Users that don't understand what the third option means.
- Sites using Googles data with the "pages from Germany" option as default. A prominent example is www.aol.de where the users only have the choice between "worldwide search" and "pages from Germany" and language isn't an available option.
The language tag is very important but very simple and looks like this
<META NAME="language" content="en">
or like this for a .de site
<META NAME="language" content="de">
I run over 400 sites in Germany and can only advise you to stay away from any combination of English and German.
Several attempts to earn some money with exit-free US erotic-stuff failed completely and that is quite frankly amazing.
You don't need to give good money out for google.de!
Try one of the many local free submitters.
Make sure that all Titles, Descriptions and Keywords are relevant and have enough drawing-power of their own.
Let an online-submitter spider your site and you're on your way!
You get a free submission to perhaps 120+ of the better SEs and Catalogues and if the keywords are half-way good, google.de, Lycos and Co. will find you within 2 - 3 weeks.
An excellent helper is always dmoz.org but don't forget: everything in German!
I have never paid a cent for ratings and enough of my sites get first-page SE-Results to keep me happy.
What more does one need?
A .de domain is an absolute Must!
Swiss and austrian surfers come over here in droves ....!
Is it important to protect a trademark or similar?
Then register a .com and a .net with the same name as the .de domain! Otherwise you could have a problem, because here everyone copies everyone else, if the topic is at all attractive.
You would be amazed, when you knew how many variations there are to the word "Partnerprogramm", there must be 20 Sites out there, all in German!
In Germany we are not fussy about the TLD so long as the site is in German!
Good post and thanks for the info.
The reason for the similar results is the fact that both use the same primary source: dmoz.org
dmoz.org now has a german version: dmoz.de
Other catalogues are scanned according to the enquiry, but dmoz gives the most frequent listings.
In other words: if the site has been accepted for free inclusion on dmoz, then it will always appear in the results of a search enquiry on yahoo or google & co.
Yahoo uses google's database just as aol, web.de, stern.de and many more do. The 'primary source' for the results shown at google.de/yahoo.de isn't dmoz but the google database and dmoz (among other sources) is only used for seed-urls.
There's absolutely no difference between the results at yahoo.de and google.de to my very best knowledge. dmoz.de is neither new or a separate version but simply an entrance page to the /World/Deutsch/ categories.
Just another comment on sudden's post. Yes - language is definitely important to be ranked OK for german visitors. Machine translation should be enough to be accepted into the german-languaged index but the visitors won't be happy with that. If you want to make absolutely sure that you relly reach them all read msg #:7 and get yourself a .de domain...
