Forum Moderators: martinibuster
thanks
bilal
However, why would he want backlinks from sites in other languages if he has an English-language site to rank? It's just unnecessary, unless he's trying to target English speaking searches in germany, Spain, etc. - which of course might be a market niche Im not aware of :P
How much sense would it make to receive traffic from these countries to an English-language version of the site? Of course, it depends on the country and on the demographic.
For example, I hear everybody in Amsterdam speaks great English (my sister lives there) and maybe its similar in most of Holland. In Germany many college students (I am a German college student ;-)) speak good English.
However most Germans I know would probably click the back button and go to a competitor instead...if they clicked on an English-language page in the first place.
Hold on - what kind of keywords is he trying to rank for in the first place?! English keywords (in those markets)?
I assume he doesnt have a local business (unless he works in tourism) otherwise attracting clients from other countries wouldnt make sense.
Take this into consideration, please:
If he's trying to rank for English-speaking keywords (and doesnt have a local tourism site or something like that) in those countries (Germany, etc.) then getting links from those countries wont really help him much. Here in Germany if I do a search in English the results are slightly different, but it's usually pretty much the same sites that I see in the US- and UK-Serps.
My guess would be that your client probably simply thinks "going international" is "great" without having too much of an idea what he's trying to achieve.
If you have any questions on the German market, you can shoot me a PM if you want.
There are people who dont search in English in those countries. They wont see the website.
And there are people in those countries that do search in English (very few compared to those who use their native otngue), and they see pretty much the same search results that people see when they search in English but are in the US or in the UK. It's somewhat different, but really not much.
I think if he wants to expand he should have a version in the local language or it simply doesn't make any sense.
And there are people in those countries that do search in English (very few compared to those who use their native otngue), and they see pretty much the same search results that people see when they search in English but are in the US or in the UK. It's somewhat different, but really not much.
i have seen country specific tld's rank higher than their foreign counterparts for English keywords; for instance, i have seen a .co.uk pr 2 website rank higher than a popular pr 5 .com page on google.co.uk; however, if i perform the same search on google.com that same pr 5 .com will take the top position and the .co.uk wont even show up on page one.
actually he needs to expand his business in such countries
explore registering national tld's specific to the country in which your client plans to expand; create link bait in any language that people may query in that question; that said, try to figure out how they refer to your service or product in that country because although English is spoken in a different country they may query the search engines with other words than may be used in the u.s. to find companies like your client's.
bilal
It reminds me of people I know that think their website will be more successful if it "goes international" or "go global". The simple fact of doing so won't increase a website's ROI. It might actually decrease it.
I like the idea of creating sub domains for specific countries to attract local visits.
if you're referring to my idea, i meant registering domains with foreign tlds in the countries where your client wants to operate; so if his site is myclient.com, and he is planning to open an office in dubai, register myclient.ae, and write the content specific to that country on that tld;
Very often foreign language websites will link to a specific post because it is the first source they see with the information about which they are writing.
The inbound links for the site have TLDs from all over the world and I have to say Google loves it!
I know in India knowing the English language will get you a better job same as many places in the world so getting a site to rank in english in another country isn't that bad an idea, anyway most all people can use the google translator with ease.
Don't forget English is considered a universal language and most not all countries are teaching it now as a required language in schools.
especially for business and technology.
Additionally, it makes a lot of sense to link to English websites from a user point of view. Let's take Wikipedia as an example. If I have written an article on purple pony plugs, and there isn't an article available on the Dutch version of Wikipedia, I'll link to the English version instead as my target audience will be able to read the English version anyway.
For example, I hear everybody in Amsterdam speaks great English (my sister lives there) and maybe its similar in most of Holland. In Germany many college students (I am a German college student ;-)) speak good English.
Yes it's similar in the rest of Holland. We learn English at the age of 10. (The time is... ten pee-em)
From my personal experience, I can say that European countries perform a lot of English searches, and they convert really well.
That's been my experience, too.
Yes I believe it does have a postive impact. The idea that I should not attract a link from a french language to to a spannish one jsut because there in different languages seems really daft to me. I know people that speak 5 languages fluently. Bilingualism in europe has pretty much become the norm, especially in the sub 30 year olds generation.
Back to the op question. In my opinion language is not the issue. Relevancy is.
[edited by: OddDog at 7:29 am (utc) on Mar. 26, 2009]
How many sites in dutch, albanian, danish, maltese, czech, slovene, macedonian, romanian, galician, icelandic are there on this topic?
Probably not many. So if someone has a website in slovene and wants to link to a website with more information on this topic. What language will the website he will point to be? Slovene, too?
Guess again.
There are probably more websites on "link developement" alone in english than the total number of websites on any topic in maltese.
However, subdomains or even just straight domain.com/language/ will start to generate inbound links to correctly categorize a site in the relevant indexes. It's just that wih country specific domains, the chance is that it will come off better. But then if you've got an old domain with good inbound links creating other language versions under the main domain is likely to get better rankings to begin with then starting with a domain from scratch.
For interest: There are 47 million results in Google under a Maltese domain. and 476,000 under a .com with the keyword "link development". I think we'd have a problem trying to ascertain any accurate figures on English prevalence, but what I am sure of is that Europe is a small place with a disproportionate voice ;) and we'd be wise not to try and make too much in the way of generalizations about online user habits unless they have a solid foundation. :)
In countries like China and Korea to do e-business you need an registration number, and if they find out you don't have one - then your website would be either blocked (from sem) or banned. so in such cases having a link building with an chinees/korean website were you expect you target audience to reach and then getting them back to your website is an feasible option..
also
Yes it's similar in the rest of Holland. We learn English at the age of 10. (The time is... ten pee-em)
Actually we start learning English at age 10, too, yet most people (except for college students, I guess) do not speak English well. The majority of them would never perform a search in English, though.
Ive heard the reason was that most dutch movies were subtitled or something? Actually Ive heard that about Sweden (and I think other Scandinavian countries).
My sister said when she first moved to Amsterdam, she was more than surprised that the reply to her question "Can you speak English?" was an "Of course, I do!".
From what Ive heard most Dutch people and Scandiavians are excellent when it comes to English. However the rest of Europe is not like that. In Germany, etc. there are quite a few (many) people who can speak decent English, I think (but most are far from fluent except for c ollege students and business people). Whereas in the South of Europe, the level of English is a lot lower in general, except for tourist destinations maybe. Ive been to Valencia (in Spain) for example, and loved it ;), but nobody really spoke a word of English.
For interest: There are 47 million results in Google under a Maltese domain. and 476,000 under a .com with the keyword "link development".
But have you checked how many of those Maltese websites are actually in maltese? Most of them are in english.
For interest: There are 47 million results in Google under a Maltese domain. and 476,000 under a .com with the keyword "link development". I think we'd have a problem trying to ascertain any accurate figures on English prevalence
I'm not sure what you mean exactly (if you type in link development and search for pages with a maltese .tld? Im sorry I didnt get that part?), but:
- English is an official language in Malta (the only official language other than Maltese if I am to trust wikipedia)
- I've thought of travelling there in the future (because English is said to be spoken so widely in Malta..and I like travelling to places where I can make myself understood :-))
- 2 friends of mine actually went there to learn English at a language school 10 years ago
Malta, the Netherlands & Scandinavia are not representative of the grasp of English of most European countries (I'm not going to mention the UK, now ;)).
It's absolutely absurd to ever entertain the idea that linking from a website that's target language is not the same as the website being linked to may be considered spammy.
I link to foreign-language sites all the time--sometimes directly, and sometimes via Google Translate. For example, if I'm writing an article on public horsecart transportation in Equineville, and if the Equineville Transit site is only in Equinian, I'll provide essential information in English and let my English-speaking readers go to the Equineville Transit site where timetables and maps should be fairly easy to decipher even for those who don't read Equinian.
Malta, the Netherlands & Scandinavia are not representative of the grasp of English of most European countries
So what? My site is in English, but it has substantial audiences in Germany, France, and Italy because of its subject matter. I'm sure the audiences in those countries would be even larger if the site's content were translated into Grmany, French, and Italian, but that's a whole separate issue. The fact of the matter is that my English-language site is already being read (and generating revenue) in Germany, France, and Italy, and it attracts unsolicited inbound links from German, French, and Italian sites.
i see spanish language sites linking to my english site just because it has a spanish domain. there is a spanish language social network that links to english sites, which some users submit, and offers an option to translate the site.
you may want to offer an option to translate the content on your site for enhanced usability for the people visiting through those foreign language links.
