How to increase traffic for multilingual website?

[Pepper82]

Hi all,
we run a multilingual website and are doing great in our main language (German) but see decreasing traffic on the other languages such as French or Arabic.
The major part of our backlinks are from German websites but also some Backlinks from French & Arabic websites.

Do we need to increase quality backlinks from French / Arabic websites in order to achieve better rankings for French / Arabic part of our website? Or will solid, high-quality backlinks from Germany also boost the ranking of the French / Arabic part of our website?

[Kendo]

This a good question.

I have just completed a new website that translates into 26 different languages. All indexes, help pages and product pages will automatically translate into the user's browser language, including meta titles, descriptions and alt tags. Or they can select from a dropdown to set a preference.

How that will fare with search engines will be interesting.

[Kendo]

I expected to see more posts on this topic.

[SurajKumarGurung]

It's not an easy task to run a multilingual website. But if you have the patience and knowledge to explore new things and keep improving accordingly, it will soon pay off.

Yes, backlink creation is just an essential part of your website promotion. Still, there are more important things to check and work on for success, which are as follows:

#1 Translation: If you are using Automatic Translation, Then I suggest you contact local freelance translators and ask him/her to check the content and improve it further. Because Human translators can interpret language from an emotional and contextual standpoint, by translating your work more accurately, use only High-Quality Translation Tools.

Translating a language correctly for use in different locales is another aspect of localizing your website. Even if a language is spoken all over the world, regional variations exist. In some countries, users expect a friendly welcome when they visit your website; otherwise, they will leave right away. Therefore, ensuring that the language is correct and localizing it for each country will reduce bounce rates and improve SEO.

#2 Content Optimization: When it comes to SEO multilingual websites require special care.
i] URL - We all know that this is the first thing that search engines find and select. So translate your URL according to local users' search habits.

ii] Search terms - Research and find what keywords are popular, especially the long tail, which helps to bring in exact users.

iii] Meta Tags - Write these tags for local users. Also do check and proper use Hreflang Tags.

I hope this helps.
Suraj

[robzilla]

How that will fare with search engines will be interesting.

How's it going so far?

[Kendo]

Human translators can interpret language

I found that most on freelance sites use an online translator so it is difficult to tell who is making it or faking it.

I have had our translations checked by some of our coders who speak those languages and while not perfect, it was considered good enough.

[Kendo]

How's it going so far?

Have not fed it to the monster yet.

[tangor]

Stating the obvious: Not all niches are created equal in different language areas. What might work in Germany or France might not have the same impact in Arabic. Not the languages, the need for the product/info being offered. Desire, Costs, Shipping, etc. Backlinks will not correct these market differences.

Meanwhile, backlinks are being aggressively limited by g and other search engines. The "old style" does not compete well with the "new style".

[explorador]

How to increase traffic for multilingual website?

Treat every site-language as an entirely different website, yes I know how that sounds and it sucks, but diff cultures embrace and relate to things differently, unless it's math. Ideally, each group must be treated differently, even in terms of graphic design. Multilingual users will identify the original language and stick to it, as translations are not really accurate, specially automatic.

I played with this with one of my websites having good traffic, in my case english and spanish, there was an specific version (same design, diff colors) for each language. Over the course of 3-4 years I did give up and put all the content together as it was just not worth it, and left all the content in just one language. You will eventually notice each language on your site IS COMPETING against diff websites in the same language out there.

That wasn't the only experience I had, a big company where I used to work tried the same, I managed the largest website there (lots of traffic) and they decided to offer the content in spanish, english, italian and german. It was a learning experience because I got to see things first hand enjoying the benefits of a full team and nice budget. During that stage I read a lot on the topic, and yes, people notice translations, content must ideally be written by native speakers.

we run a multilingual website and are doing great in our main language (German) but see decreasing traffic on the other languages such as French or Arabic.

Just my opinion, this is open to discussion, but I don't think search engines treat multilingual versions of a website as diff entities competing on rankings against other websites, I think it's mostly as one against another, just one entity.

[Kendo]

I don't think search engines treat multilingual versions of a website as diff entities

I do have one website that uses different aliases like de.example.com, pl.example.com, etc that cannot be seen as the one website. They contain the same pages but the info on each page is language specific. About 20 different languages and as many sitemaps. The saving that I get is I can use a SSL wildcard.

[headingame]

Do we need to increase quality backlinks from French / Arabic websites in order to achieve better rankings for French / Arabic part of our website? Or will solid, high-quality backlinks from Germany also boost the ranking of the French / Arabic part of our website?

I'm very interested in finding a "definitive" answer to this as well. My understanding is that link-building boosts that URL's rating in all cases - however, regarding the translated versions of that same URL, they compete with a different set of peers (perhaps ones who focus on content in that language exclusively). Thus, the translated versions will most likely perform differently than the German articles.

So, building more quality backlinks involving French and Arabian domains must help IMO. Also, perhaps you'll have to do separate keyword research to tidy up how your H1s read when translated, as I don't believe translating tools will always provide natural-sounding titles, hence hurting that URL's organic traffic ratings. Again, I'll be very grateful if anyone can share relevant data regarding situations like this...

[Kendo]

Latest new from Google is that all sub-domains will be treated as the main domain. So websites like:
ar.example.com
be.example.com
cn.example.com
etc, will be treated as the same domain even if they are setup as different sites. Mine have been submitted as individual sites, each with their own sitemap.

Not sure how this will affect seo for any particular site, and doubt if it will to be favourable.

[Dr_Doomain]

Yes, backlinks from country-specific domains will help you a lot in this situation. Because not just thematic relevancy matters, but language and country-relevancy too. Try to search for French and Arabic guest posts if you can.