how to optimize a bilingual index the best?

[leolapinos]

Hi,

I'd really appreciate your input in the following issue.

We want to optimize our index for two languages (Spanish and English), I noticed however that in the serps our index ranks quite well for Spanish keywords while it doesn't for the English terms.

In order to give the pages the best possible chances in the serps I think it would be best splitting up the language choice (titles for example are not really cute in two languages), here's what i had in mind:

Instead of keeping the index bilingual, I would split them up giving the best ranking keywords the priority, hence my index would become Spanish (note that 60% of our visitors are Hispanics). I would optimize this index the best possible so that it actually can rank even better.

In order to have the English language ranking as well I would be including anchortext links to a new English-only index, optimized for English. In order to have this index ranking asap I'd already link to it from our existing bilingual index before actually using it. Once it is indexed and has enough Pagerank i would launch the double index version with the Spanish version being the main index.

The English index would of course be supported with the necessary backlinks + internal links on the site itself of course.

Is this the a good way to work?

Thanks,

DK

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[phranque]

i am also interested in this subject.
do "language"-specific tld's (.es, .de, etc) have an affect versus having a language optimized subdomain of example.com?
do language-specific keyword and description meta tags have an affect on language optimization?

[leolapinos]

is there really nobody here who has the knowledge to give some advice on this topic?

[bill]

I haven't used multilingual pages. They seem to be an unnecessary drain of the user's attention. Not everyone is fluent in more than one language, so you're limiting the understandable content and possibly alienating some users.

I keep different languages on different sites. You can certainly list different languages on the pages, but I would be wary of content.

However, I'm not much of an authority on the Hispanic market. Multilingual pages may work for that demographic. I do more work in Asian markets.