The world is only getting bigger.  The U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division estimates the world’s population to be as of May 27th, 2008, 6,670,328,109 (source) – that’s almost seven billion souls roaming this earth.  And how can seven billion people on one tiny little planet possibly communicate with one another?  Language in its written and spoken forms has been the pinnacle of human achievement and has made our ability to connect with one another possible (I know some of you believe that your wife’s stare after you refuse to do the dishes communicates volumes, but that’s an entirely different language all on its own).  In 1999, the Ethnologue cataloged 6,500 living languages and currently only 6,000 of them are still in practice (“Languages of the World”).  Of those 6,000 languages, the top-ten languages used on the Internet today are as follows:

1. English
2. Chinese
3. Spanish
4. Japanese
5. French
6. German
7. Arabic
8. Portuguese
9. Korean
10. Italian

(*source)

To master Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the English language is difficult enough, but what to do with sites that cater to English and Spanish-speaking visitors?  And what happens when you have a site in both languages that targets multiple countries (i.e. America and Mexico)?

To begin, you want to find a hosting company that is native to the country the site was designed to primarily serve.  This is imperative.  Furthermore, you need to ensure the domain name is properly registered for that country.  If you have a primarily English site dealing with real estate in Denver, Colorado, it is best to have yourdomainname.com (or .net or .org).  In Canada use .ca and for the U.K. use .co.uk (same goes for Australia – .com.au)

If you want your Spanish-speaking friends to view condos in downtown Denver, then you would create a Spanish subfolder on the site, such as yourdomainname.com/spanish/ and put the identical content that is now translated into that folder.

Now, there is some debate between setting up subfolders and creating an entirely new site completely in Spanish due to better search engine results when using the two separate sites scheme.  However, if the site is hosted in America (or another host country with the content bearing the host country’s language), and is relevant to that country, it is not only quite appropriate to use the subfolder approach – it is recommended.

On the contrary, If we are building a site in which the content is not country/language specific, the recommended course of action is to build separate sites.  Host one site in America with the English language content and the other site in Mexico or Spain with the Spanish language content.  You would then build links to each site and almost treat them as separate entities.  Should someone wish to visit the Spanish site (or vice versa), provide a link between the two sites as a translation.

One word regarding translations:  when translating your site, do not – I repeat, DO NOT – rely on mechanical means of translation.  Spend the money to hire a person to translate your site, preferably one that lives and works in the language-speaking country so they may be familiar with the native cultural dialects and norms.  One mistranslated word and your site could easily go from selling real estate in Denver to insulting someone’s mamma.  It is just as important for a website to communicate correctly as it does effectively.

This article is just a brief beginning to a tumultuous topic.  The thoughts and reasoning of the SEO community-at-large continue to change on a pretty regular basis when dealing with multiple languages and optimization.  Ultimately, it comes down to what the visitor needs.

Source:

• Unleaded Software