Google and 2 language based site

[mola4ever]

I have a site name.com and want to optimize it for 2 languages. My first index is www.name.com/index.html and let's say our german relative is www.name.com/de/index.html

What are the key things to take into consideration to avoid duplicate content and seo the site (no subdomains!) ?

[tedster]

When content is translated into another language, it cannot be filtered out as duplicate. To be considered duplicate or near-duplicate, there needs to be a character string match, and not a match in "meaning." In other words, Google does not translate in order to determine duplicate content.

I've used the approach you describe even on a 12 language site, and it works great with no further concern except a bit of attention to the server's http headers for character-set and language. The German pages bring in traffic from google.de, the Polish pages from google.pl and so on.

[mola4ever]

Ok i got that but i was wondering if the site's layout can be considered duplicated content (images, tables or even the css for that matter) and if the site would perform well with name.com/index.html and name.com/de/index.html Versus name.com/en/index.html
In other words is it necessary to change the en version just to look the same as the de one ?

[tedster]

There's no reason to have that concern. Duplicate content filtering is about the "content", not the template elements. Many sites have the same layouts.

[mola4ever]

I guess you're right, what would happen to all the blogs or other sites that use common CMS's...