International SEO

Marketing
1

Hi all,

I had a quick question regarding my website SEO.

I have a website (Home > Little Crackers) that I have managed to (with a huge amount of work) create in three languages - although a lot of it is still in the translating stage. I purchased the shopping cart but then found out that although the other two languages displayed perfectly on the website, they would not list in Google.

I spoke to the people behind the shopping cart and they agreed to amend the code so that google (and other search engines) would be able to “see” the other languages.

When you got to a page in another language it displays with the language code in the url:

http://www.little-crackers.com/product.php/[COLOR=“Red”]es[/COLOR]/205/caja_de_regalo_para_bebe_org_nicos_amarillento

However it is still not being listed by google (in Spanish for example). I was told that everything is correct and it is now up to google (and other search engines) to list it in the other languages but after over a month and even though google states that it was cached 6th May it has not listed anything in either of the other languages.

Does anything else need to be done or do I just have to have a little more patience?

Thanks to anyone that can help with this and if there are any further details you need let me know.

2

Do you have a sitemap? If so, did you update it with links to the non-english versions?

3

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I have a sitemap that generates automatically. (http://www.little-crackers.com/sitemap.php) it generates a new version every 2 days - just to catch any changes.

I have just had a check of it and it does NOT include any other language, will this stop the spiders crawling on the other pages or should they visit the other language pages anyway?

4

I believe that would be good idea also to use sub domain names for the various languages.
es.domain.com
en.domain.com
etc.

5

Thanks server point - this may be something I can look into doing if it doesnt register (I only have basic knowledge of coding and any changes that I do I would have to pay for).

Do you think, given time, google will register the additional languages or will I have to make changes?

6

I have had a quick look at your site.

I noticed that the index page different languages is:
English: Home > Little Crackers
Spanish: http://www.little-crackers.com/index.php?&language=2
Catalan: http://www.little-crackers.com/index.php?&language=3

For one of the sub pages the structure is similar:
English: http://www.little-crackers.com/?lang=ensection.php?xSec=11&xPage=1
Spanish: http://www.little-crackers.com/?lang=essection.php?xSec=11&xPage=1
Catalan: http://www.little-crackers.com/?lang=casection.php?xSec=11&xPage=1

This kind of structure, where different languages are handled by URL parameters, is likely to confuse googlebot no end.

If you want to GEO-TARGET a web page use the facilities available in webmaster tools.

If you want to LANGUAGE-TARGET a web page use the www.mydomain.com/xx or www.xx.mydomain.com structure.

The following, short, google videos should make things clear.

YouTube - GoogleWebmasterHelp’s Channel

YouTube - GoogleWebmasterHelp’s Channel

YouTube - GoogleWebmasterHelp’s Channel

7

Hi Madeira,

Thank you for your advice and the videos were really interesting - I learned a lot from them but not exactly what I needed.

It looks like this is a problem that would need some work to resolve.