Multilingual Website

Keywords, descriptions, titles

[ControlZ]

I have built a website for a client that does translation services in (4) languages. English, French, Spanish & Portuguese.

Not sure how to best develop the Meta Tags. Should I create one set for the English version of the site and 3 other sets for the versions of the sites written in Sp, Fr, and Portuguese?

Obviously people in the US will search using English, but the other 3 versions of the site are aimed at businesses in Brazil, France & Spain. If I use Meta Tags written in English, then the title and description will have no relevance to the copy in the foreign language versions.

Appreciate all comments, especially from those that have had a similar experience with developing a site to be read in 4 languages.

Suggesstions how how to the site listed in foreigh language versions of Google would be greatly appreciated too!

[ivacho]

Do it with http_accept_language
strip the first 2 chars of it and you know where the visitor have to go to. See below.
<?
if (!isset($_SESSION['language']))
{
$_SESSION['language'] = substr($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"],0,2);
}
if (isset($_GET['language']))
{
$_SESSION['language'] = substr($_GET['language'],0,2);
}
if ($_SESSION['language'] == 'en'
{
include("global/menu_text/en.php");

}
elseif ($_SESSION['language'] == 'de'
{
include("global/menu_text/de.php");
}

[ControlZ]

I am not 100% sure how this will help me. If someone whos speaks Spanish ends up on the English index page, they have an option to select a Spanish version of the site.

How does your suggestion apply to titles and descriptions?

Thanks!

[PatrickDeese]

I would make separate landing pages for each language, with title and meta tags in their respective languages.

[ControlZ]

cool - thanks!