Multi-Language SE 'Appeal'

English language ranking alongside the main (local) listing?

[Brownie]

My site consists of a main English language site, with links to our 'foreign' language sites, which are set-up in sub directories from the main page. On some of the sites we are setting up local domains to gently mirror (not exact copies, for obvious reasons) the 'foreign' language sites, which will allow us to use English keywords on one site, and the 'foreign' language on the other. However, this is not possible in all cases.

So far I have achieved fair success in a short space of time with these 'foreign' sites on the respective local search engines. However, in certain languages (eg Japanese) the search for our company name or search term could be in English, or Japanese.

So in this case, only our Japanese site is listed, which currently contains no English text, and our English site has no listing, I assume because a local language is a prerequisite for a listing.

What is the best way introduce English language text on these 'foreign' language pages without damaging the local language listing?

[agerhart]

I am not too familiar with this topic to tell you the truth, but I will try and get some help for you.

[mivox]

A lot of foreign sites I've seen (as I'm in the US) had the company name in both languages, or a small English copyright paragraph at the bottom, and a "English Version" link somewhere on the page...

That would at least give visitors (and spiders) somewhere to go for english text.

[rcjordan]

>What is the best way introduce English language text on these 'foreign' language pages without damaging the local language listing?

I think the most conservative way to protect the local language status would be to show your English introductory text/link as a graphic with the ALT attribute in local language.

[rencke]

Never forget the basic rule for good rankings at Google: Perfect inlinks. So: On every page in the non-English site, put "This page in English" pointing to the corresponding page in English. And for every page in English: a similar link "Diese Seite auf Deutsch" pointing to the corresponding German page (or whatever non-English language is concerned.) Google will love it, your visitors will love it and everybody will be happy. Even better if you can figure out a good keyword as link text.

[Brownie]

Thanks for the advice. I currently have links between the relevant language pages, though just using flag graphics. This should be enough for the spiders to follow, but maybe I could make better use of the alt tags.

What I may do is create a few gateway pages in the local languages, but keep the page titles and descriptions in English.

Would this be enough to ensure a listing for SE that require a local language, yet tailored for English keywords?

Finally, is it possible to have more than one meta description (one in each language)?

[Eric_Jarvis]

DON'T use flags to represent languages

what do you use to represent English?...Portuguese?...Spanish?...how do you think people in the US, Brazil or Mexico feel about that?

now try moving on to Flemish, or one of the Indian languages?...Arabic is a major online language, what flag do you use for that?