English Language Sites On Other Language SE

Is this Scenario Valid?

[austtr]

I've always been of the opinion that to get indexed on any worthwhile foreign language search engine, your site needs to be in that language and possibly also topical to that country. You might even need to have your business in that country in some cases.

Over the past few months I've been getting approaches from an online company, USA based, offering a service to get my sites included in foreign language engines. The key to this proposal is to assume that most of the web viewing world speaks English and is prepared to view a site of interest in English..... but only if they found it first in their preferred native language search engine.

The deal is to create a foreign language replica of the English home page and add a notice that the pages which follow are in English.

Quotes:

"This is the "culturally correct" way to make your first steps on foreign e-markets"

"...you need to have at least 1 page in French optimized with French keywords in order to submit on French search engines, at least 1 page in Japanese optimized with Japanese keywords in order to submit on Japanese search engines etc."

My initial reaction was to dismiss this as rubbish along with the other email dross that comes floting by. But then I recalled some posts elsewhere that acknowledge probably 90% or more of the public never change the "as delivered" default settings on their PC. If the default is the Acme German search engine then it stays that way for ever.... and yes, they probably are skilled in English.

So maybe this pitch does have something going for it.... but do foreign language engines accept sites where only a 1 page intro is in their language?

Any experiences to share?

[Shakil]

a very interesting point which You raise.

We run an ecommerce site and supply to a number of European countries, our site is in ENGLISH.

I did look at tranlations, but the hard part would then be offering Support/Feedback in German/Dutch etc etc.

I have been thinking about getting 1 page translations done, so the foreign SEs and Local Googles can index them, and then use it as traffic driver to the main site.

At the moment I am in 2 minds about this.

I am sure members such as Heini and Vitaplease will be kind enough to share some information/knowledge on this topic.

Shak

[heini]

Well to begin with: what is a foreign language search engine?
At least in Europe you have a situation where 95-99% of searches are served from international engines.
Google. Google. Google, ATW/Fast via Lycos, Tiscali, T-Online and other protals, some INK, some AV.

Those are the players where you have to be positioned.
A company not knowing/saying this reminds me of the "we submit your site to 333.333 search engines worldwide" category.

So - international engines, but with local sites.
Almost inevitably those offer the user the option to search pages in their language or pages worldwide, all languages.
The default option differs from site to site. But: 90% of the searches done will be for keywords from the local language! So it doesn't even matter much if they search under the worldwide or the local option.

So to get the eyeballs from the international audiences you don't need to be in obscure local engines. You need a translated site, with good keywords and good ranking.
Now do you reckon you get good ranking in Google.de, Google.fr or a major Japanese engine with a translated "homepage"? One page, with no anchor text links pointing to it etc? How's that supposed to work?

>"This is the "culturally correct" way to make your first steps on foreign e-markets"

....no comment....

[Shakil]

Now do you reckon you get good ranking in Google.de, Google.fr or a major Japanese engine with a translated "homepage"? One page, with no anchor text links pointing to it etc? How's that supposed to work?
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Deep down I knew this was coming, but I was just looking at any excuse so I do NOT have to employ 2-3 extra staff to handle the local language support.

Shak

[heini]

Shak, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't have success on foreign language markets without a full fledged presence/support there.
It depends on so many factors, specific product, which country, support intensive or not, etc etc.

The main point however is: what do you want? do you want to get qualified traffic from a foreign language audience? Then the approach of that company austrr mentions won't do you any good.

Oh, sure the engines will index that page, but it sure won't rank anywhere near where you want to be. And even if you get traffic: those people willing to buy from an english speaking site don't need a "homepage" in their language.

[edited by: heini at 10:49 pm (utc) on Jan. 17, 2003]

[jimbeetle]

>>"...you need to have at least 1 page in French optimized with French keywords in order to submit on French search engines, at least 1 page in Japanese optimized with Japanese keywords in order to submit on Japanese search engines etc."

If I correctly remember that e-mail it went on to say that the page would welcome the visitor and tell them that the rest of the site was in English. That's a pretty useless "culturally correct" way to do business.

Can't recall why I opened that e-mail. I usually have a good nose for stuff like that and delete, delete, delete.

As I think about it having a welcome page in different languages for a travel-related site is not a bad idea, though I'm going to look into having a friend do the translating.

Jim