Does anyone have multi-language websites?

Whatever you do, if you 'sign up' with somebody who is offering the site for next to nothing year one, find out what the regular annual price is and ideally go for one that provides what you need, not umpteen extras of which the majority are well beyond your comprehension. Whilst I was in a consultancy collective not so far back we made that mistake with the price, something like £5.50 for year one and whilst later it was not that expensive, they bombarded us with what we should have and at what price and we would have been paying through the nose for nothing special in the end. The bottom line is that they are in it for business not altruism and know that we are out to earn too, so what goes round comes round.

Thanks Finn. I' ve copied it for ease of access by all.

Finn

You are right about the Penguin update, now I understand a little more about it I have checked my ratings and they are the same as before the update. I'm pretty much an amateur and I don't use any of the devices that you mention - haven't even heard of some of them!

I'll stick with what I hope is quality copy and well-researched key words as you suggest.

Thanks for the warning! :-)

Hi Finn. Really useful information here. Could you re-post in my group, http://www.survivefrance.com/group/web-design/forum/topics/seo-site-engine-optimisation ? Alternatively, may I copy and paste it there? Thanks, Sheila.

Hi Finn

Thanks for your detailed reply - I will bear in mind your advice whilst planning the new website. There is a lot to think about and much conflicting advice around - I guess in the end you have to go partly with your instinct especially as the playing field keeps changing with events like the Google Penguin update. Still, it's a good challenge for me, or my French, so I will approach it that way and the results will speak for themselves no doubt!

Thanks to everyone who replied - we are going to go ahead and purchase a .fr domain name and I will spend the bank holiday converting our English version to French - well some of it anyway!

on name. noticed how many french sites have english names? bottom line appears to be: don't matta....

Kathrin got very close to a very easy response, close to what she is saying here. I have been bilingual since I can speak, so it would be natural, however I am married to a Swiss person and they have four languages straight off and so a lot of website there do just that plus English. We also both have Spanish and reasonable Portuguese. Our tally is actually six languages between us we can use proficiently and have done professionally. So our old website that was recently killed off and will soon be replaced was just that. It takes more time than a monolingual site but if you can do it there is no reason whatsoever not to. Like Kathrin and us, go for it.

Jan, I can't see what is wrong with posting your website address - after it is relevant to this topic :-)

Chabris Loire Valley

....notice that both of our sites have search engine friendly names in either franch or english

Colin

Sorry Catherine

I didn't bother checking to see if mywebsite.com actually existed! What I meant was that I have a .com website and a .fr version of it for the French version. The bit before the dot is the same (French) on the basis that it's easier to tell a French person the website URL and they'll recognise what you say, and if you have to spell it for English speakers, then it's easier to do that in English! Not sure if I can post our website address - send me a message if you'd like it.

I pay about £30 a year to host both websites, in the UK I think, and the domain names cost less than a tenner a year.

Jan

Hi Colin

Thanks for your links, though the first one doesn't seem to be working properly, it's not taking me to your site.

Interesting about the English site ranking higher than the French one - good luck with increasing the .fr ranking!

S

Hi Jan, I need to create a new website for a completely different business so looked at mywebsite.com but it seems to be expensive (for my budget) yet it mentions the word 'free'. How do you get it for free and not get caught up in this monthly charge they ask for?

Hi Maria

We've got 2 versions of our B&B website - the English one being mywebsite.com and the French one mywebsite.fr. I remember reading somewhere that if you run a business in France you're obliged to have a French website, no matter what other languages it's in.

I did mine myself, although an English speaking French friend did the translation of the French one for me. Not sure how it all works with SEO, but you feel that it ought to be advantageous to have versions in different languages. Feel free to send me a message if you'd like to look at ours and see how it works.

Bon courage,

Jan

Hi Maria, No, the domain name remains the same (??? !). With iowners.net you have the option to add on as much as or as little as you like and it's specifically aimed at the rental market. The basic package is free and then you choose whether or not to buy extras such as the domain name, seo marketing, ad removal etc., The hosting used to be 10euro per year (could still be the same) but it's now done by another company - very reasonable though. However the titles obviously change according to the language. To give you an indication of what's possible, and I am a novice, my site can be found on my page!

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

I am like Catherine, running this on a shoestring so I was planning to do the work myself - to be honest I can't imagine handing my website over to someone else to work on, no matter the language (too much of a control freak I guess) and it will be good for me to do the translation as I am trying to improve my French. I do have someone who can check the French version for me.

The main things I was wondering about are:

- should the name of my website be in french rather than just adding .fr to the english version?

- are there advantages to having a .fr domain name in terms of SEO

Catherine, thanks for your feedback, it's really helpful. Does the foreign language version of your website have a country specific domain name such as .fr ?

HI Maria,

Our website is in three languages; English, French and German, as we speak all three languages. You enter the site under one domain name (I don't know if I'm allowed to mention it here), and then click on an icon to get into your required language. It took me AGES to translate it all and then had the French corrected by a friend and reworked the German part with my aunt. Several long nights and a lot of red wine included!

Good luck!

Hi Maria, I set up my gite and chambres d’hôtes business on a shoe string and used iowners.net to create a website (suited my budget) they have language options so I used google translate and then multilingual friends & associates to polish the final version. I have to say that advertising in another language does reach a wider audience. The bulk (more than 90%) of my clients are french and appreciate being able to read in detail, what we have to offer and it has brought a lot more dutch, german and belgian clients. However I find, the Spanish in particular, appear to then expect you to be able to speak and continue to communicate in that language. I have then found myself relying on google translate to continue the communication until they arrived and then it's been fun! Especially with the basques who haven't necessarily spoken french! But at the end of the day I do feel that having extra languages on your site does help.