Duplicate trouble? New language & domain, but same graphics & code.

[zampik]

I have a website that I have developed in a foreign language. Now that I made it successfull, I feel confident about publishing it in english as well.

I am planning to get a new domain, hosting etc but I would like to reuse my graphics and layout on my new website as well. (At least until I have more time to brush up on my design skills)

My question is, Would i be penalized by duplicate content at all by doing this? I plan to link from my existing website to my new website(in english) as well...

I will change all the alt tags for images, but the layout code will pretty much be the same. All the content will be different since it will be in a new language...

Thank you,

[Robert Charlton]

zampik - Because of the language differentiation, you should not have any duplication problems. I have a client with a 300 page site translated into 8 different languages on exactly the same template, with exactly the same structure, and they all rank just fine.

Because of geo-localization, though, it's advisable, if you can, to get the inbound links to your sites from other sites in the language (and geo area) in which you want to rank.

[zampik]

Thank you very much Robert...

The other thing in my mind is also 30-40 % of the wording will match to my other language site because the terms that are used are pretty much very international. My page names, SEO stuff (such as titles), inner page cateogry names which will be in H1 tags or bolded etc will always be different though.

Do you think that 30 % may be an issue? Or does google dislike just the 100% copied sites?

Also that you for the comment about the links...