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As multilingual Websites become increasingly present, Webmasters are keen to have their Websites registered with country-specific search engines, directories and indexes. However, the same problem of visibility occurs in all search engines, irregardless of what language is native to them. Potential visitors type in keywords in their own language, and a Webmaster's site might indeed be part of the search results. Alas, their site is often buried some 10 or 20 pages down in the "results" pages. The same problem as we find in English-language search engines.
There has been a lot of talk about optimizing Home Pages for the top search engines lately. But I'd like to take the discussion one more step. Not only does a Home Page have to be optimized for the top search engines in English, but also for search engines that are popular in the countries targeted by the Website.
If the site gives an option of German, French and Spanish, there is some choice about which search engines to optimize for: both top international search engines, and local ones to each country. Here is an analysis of which search engines to optimize for:
Top international search engines:
Chinese Danish Dutch English Finnish French German Alta Vista yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Excite yes yes yes yes yes Infoseek yes yes yes yes yes yes Lycos yes yes yes yes yes
Italian Japanese Korean Norw. Port. Spanish Swedish Alta Vista yes yes yes yes yes yes yes Excite yes yes yes Infoseek yes yes yes yes yes Lycos yes yes yes yes National search engines:
U.K. -- Make sure that your English Home Page is optimized for excite.co.uk, Yell (yellow pages) and UKplus
German-- Make sure that your German Home Page is optimized for web.de and fireball.de
French -- Make sure that your French Home Page is optimized for Voila and Nomade (and perhaps Lokace)
Spanish -- the Hispanic online world uses directories mainly, instead of search engines
Italian -- no search engines besides Virgilio worth optimizing forOur discussion is limited to search engines, and does not include directories (such as Yahoo, or others local to each country). Sometimes (as with Spanish) directories can be at least as important as search engines for people in certain countries to find Websites they are interested in. So it is a different procedure for getting to the top of a list about a certain subject, since there is a human being responsible for making each list in a directory. Each directory would need to be contacted individually, and convinced by whatever means to get a better position in their list.
Here is some practical advice on how to prepare a Home Page in another language for submission to search engines. You need to put yourself in the place of people in another country and imagine what words they would use (in their language) to find your site. Arrive at a short list of words in other languages, and optimize each language's Home Page for one keyword or expression in that language. Pay particular attention to the title, the META tags (description and keywords), what is contained between the <H1> or <H2> tags at the top of the page, and the keywords used in the first paragraph. The algorhythms are different for each search engine, but you have to make sure that when someone types in "ordinateur" (French for "computer") into a search, they will find sites on the first and second results page that have well integrated the word "ordinateur" into the parts of the Home Page that are likely to make the site come up first in a search.
For example, let's look at the preparation of an Indian art gallery for French and German. The original preparation within the <HEAD></HEAD> tags is as follows:
English:
<META name=keywords content="indian art, indian folk art, indian tribal, art, Indian contemporary art, contemporary art, paintings">
<META name=description content="India's premier virtual art gallery, featuring the finest Folk, Tribal and Contemporary Indian Art.">
<TITLE>Shalinart, India's premier virtual art gallery</TITLE>Here is how it would look in French and German:
French:
<META name=keywords content="Art indien, art indien contemporain, art indien populaire, art indien tribal, artistes indiens, artisans indiens, Inde, Inde artistique, livres d'art indien, galerie d'art indien.">
<META name=description content="Shalinart, la première galerie virtuelle d'art indien contemporain populaire et tribal. Visionnez les oeuvres des artistes indiens, des artisans indiens. Acheter une oeuvre d'art indien.">
<TITLE>Art indien contemporain populaire et tribal, artistes indiens, artisans indiens, l'Inde artistique.</TITLE>German:
<meta name="keywords" content="indische Kunst, indische folkloristische Kunst, indische Völkerkunst, indische Gegenwartskunst, Metallgegenstände, Bilder, Völkerskulpturen, Völkerkunst, folkloristische Kunst, Gegenwartskunst, thangkas, warli, pithora, madhubani, patachitra, Miniaturen, Batik, gebissene Nagel, Natur morte, Kunstbücher, regionale Kunst, ethische Kunst, Dorfkunst, ländliche Kunst, ländliches Handwerk, Dorfhandwerk">
<meta name="description" content="Indien's erste virtuelle Kunstgallerie, die die feinste folkoristische Kunst, Völkerkunst und Gegenwartskunst darbietet.">
<title>Shalinart, Kunst aus Indien</title>Each page in French and German follows, written entirely in these two languages, paying attention to mention keywords in the first paragraph, in the ALT tags for each image, etc. -- all the tricks of the trade for optimizing Web pages. And those diacritical marks (the accents, umlauts, etc.): leave them in the META tags, since some search engines have not yet learned to pick up HTML versions of these letters.
Then the pages need to be submitted to the six search engines (in each languages) above, wait the appropriate time period (usually 3-4 weeks) and test for how the page performed. If it is not among the top page or two for the French or German keywords used, some tweaking may be necessary. And this is where the expertise of search engine specialists comes into discussion. Each search engine has its own algorhythms, and certain consultants have made it their speciality to know the top search engines intimately. They know how to tweak a Web page for each search engine, so that page will come up in the first 20-30 sites for a particular search term, no matter what language is used for the search term.
Another possibility is to use software to raise one's search engine positioning (such as WebPosition Gold, Top Dog, etc.), but these software do not apply to search engines other than the top American ones. They would not apply to search engines in France and Germany, for instance. Sometimes it just isn't possible to replace human intervention.
Written by Bill Dunlap
Managing Director, Euro-Marketing Associates
ema@glreach.com
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Last revised on 19 April, 1999
URL: glreach.com/eng/ed/art/rep-eur15.html