
Ask HN: How to promote non-english websites/content? - sudshekhar
I am researching for ways to promote content to regional audiences. The problems I&#x27;ve felt so far:<p>- Lack of clarity about SEO rules in this regard. Eg: Will Spanish content rank higher than english one if I search in spanish? Or will google do a combined (transliterated) search and rank the best?<p>-  Top Trends show what is being searched for in english. No option to see search top trends <i>by language</i> . Any way around this? [0]<p>- Even if its a non-english website, what are best the practices for URLs? Should they still be in english or can we use the regional language?<p>0 - Such a feature would be incredibly useful I think.<p>Edit: Clarified that by trends, I was referring to top trends.
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pierrefar
(Former Googler worked on this topic and now help businesses with this kind of
question)

The short answer is focus on what is best for your users and what they expect,
but there are a couple of things you need to do for best indexing in some
cases.

To answer your last question first, if your server can respond to a URL and
browsers fetch it successfully, Googlebot and indexing will be fine. Want to
use UTF-8 for fully localized URLs? Go for it. Want to stick to ASCII? Sure.
What's best for your users is the answer.

Trends across languages is a very odd request. Take the string of characters
"chat". In English it's used in many different ways, a verb, a noun, etc. Same
string in French means cat. You really wouldn't want to look at the trends of
this string by combining English and French.

Now your biggest question: a search engine tries to identify the language of
the pages in its index, and also the language the searcher is using. To
illustrate:

1\. The "chat" example is perfect for this, but also any number of queries.

2\. Take someone searching from Switzerland. Wouldn't it be better to show
them pages in their preferred language, be it German, French, or Italian?

3\. Take someone looking for a specific business. If that business has pages
for its UK, Australia, and USA subsidiaries, it would be great to show
searchers the right country page if they're searching from the UK, Australia,
or USA, even if all are using English queries and these localized pages are
also all in English. For that, you'll need hreflang annotations, which also
works across languages in the same country (Switzerland) or across languages
(global pages in English and Spanish).

~~~
sudshekhar
> Trends across languages is a very odd request

Again I think I am failing to convey my request properly.

Take a look at this :
[https://www.google.co.in/trends/topcharts](https://www.google.co.in/trends/topcharts)
[0]. This is the list of top keywords being searched in India. And they are
all in english!

I would like to see a similar list for keywords that were actually typed out
in hindi (or any other language I choose to target). In essence, _keyword
trends in hindi_. This isn't so much about search volumes/keyword
analysis/other-marketing-terms as it is about simply trying to get to know the
target audience and their demands.

With the internet so dominated by english, most people who frequently use the
internet have picked up enough english to get their jobs done. A lot of them
search hindi terms in english and are decently satisfied with results (or else
they ask their neighbors/relatives for help).

So then, who are the users still looking up terms using hindi and what are the
things they are searching for? Content discovery, at least for hindi, is a big
pain in the ass and most of the regional content is click-bait/spammy [barring
maybe the regional newspaper websites].

So for anyone trying to address this pain, knowing the current demand will
help them target this niche and provide it better service. It will

a) Encourage these users to keep using their native language and not switch to
english. Thus, increasing demand for more native content.

b) Encourage others to join the internet and look things up in their native
language. Even the ones who are currently using broken english might choose to
switch to the language they are more comfortable with

c) Allow the publishers to grow along with the crowd and keep improving their
services. Further expanding markets.

0 - Even though I am taking the example of India/hindi here, I believe the
situation would be true for a lot of other country/language combinations.
Please correct me if I am wrong here.

~~~
pierrefar
Append hl=hi query string parameter to the page to get it in Hindi (hi is the
language code for Hindi). Example:

[https://www.google.com/trends/home/all/IN?hl=hi](https://www.google.com/trends/home/all/IN?hl=hi)

~~~
sudshekhar
This page is simply translating the earlier page to hindi, am I right?

Is there anyway to get the (top/currently trending) search terms typed out in
hindi?

Eg: See [0]. While Flipkart is an often searched term on google, फ्लीपकारट
(same word in hindi), is hardly ever searched. Similary, search frequencies of
नौकरी, naukri and job are also very different (all three mean job, first one
pure hindi, second is phonetically same as the first and can be termed as
hinglish).

Similary, the english terms currently trending in india will be very different
from the ones that were looked up in Hindi. And AFAIK, there's no way to see
popular keywords by adding a specific filter on the input language used.

0 -
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=IN&q=%E0%A4%AB%E0%...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=IN&q=%E0%A4%AB%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%AA%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%9F,Flipkart,naukri,%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80,job)

~~~
mattnewton
Idk, India is a weird example because the country is largely bilingual

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nkkollaw
I've been having the same problem with the Polish market. Luckily I found
their Reddit alternative—Wykop—and lots of people are on there.

The easiest way would be asking a local webmaster/SEO expert.

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55555
> Lack of clarity about SEO rules in this regard. Eg: Will Spanish content
> rank higher than english one if I search in spanish? Or will google do a
> combined (transliterated) search and rank the best?

Spanish content will rank higher. No need to know google's official claim
here, just try it out.

> Trends show what is being searched for in english. No option to see search
> trends

I just tried trends.google.com in English, Spanish, and Thai, and they all
worked.

> Even if its a non-english website, what are best the practices for URLs?
> Should they still be in english or can we use the regional language?

Check your regional competition. In general the URLs will be in the foreign
language. Sometimes for SEO purposes they will even use non-english character
sets (as opposed to more brandable phonetic transliterations like taobao.com
or kaidee.com etc, but even then often use local character sets after the
domain -- ie: www.booking.com/โรงแรม). Not all TLD's support this but the big
generic ones do.

~~~
sudshekhar
> I just tried trends.google.com in English, Spanish, and Thai, and they all
> worked.

I am assuming you mean that you searched for specific keywords in those
languages and google showed you the frequency of that search. I am sorry, I
should've been clearer.

I am looking for 'top-trends' in those languages. One can do trial and error
(compare how frequently people search for jobs, education, news etc. in any
language) but this leads to a chicken and egg problem. Are people not
searching for content in that language because lack of such content ? Or is it
because they just aren't interested (or have become accustomed to english)?

------
dbg31415
I've done a lot of this sort of work for multi-national product marketing and
eCommerce sites. There are some good articles documenting best practices.

Regarding some of your questions:

> \- Lack of clarity about SEO rules in this regard. Eg: Will Spanish content
> rank higher than english one if I search in spanish? Or will google do a
> combined (transliterated) search and rank the best?

If you search the local version of Google (like
[https://www.google.es/](https://www.google.es/)), pages you tag as being for
that locale will show up higher. If you search in Spanish on Google.com it'll
just match on words... you can still target to Spanish Speakers in the US, for
example, using language codes + locale codes (`es-us` for example).

\- Even if its a non-english website, what are best the practices for URLs?
Should they still be in english or can we use the regional language?

URLs should be in regional languages whenever possible. Use a subfolder
structure though so you can gain domain authority instead of having to re-
build it across multiple TLDs.

For more information you can check out:

* Use hreflang for language and regional URLs - Search Console Help || [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en)

* Use a sitemap to indicate alternate language pages - Search Console Help || [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en)

* Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Search Console Help || [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en)

From personal experience... don't use a string-based translation service. Way
too much tone gets lost in context and tone between sentences. Just write
content for each language you intend to serve content to... it's tempting to
go with the translation services... but by the time you have a native speaker
review the context it's not cheaper than just hiring a native copy-writer /
marketing person.

------
techaddict009
Use hreflang tag if you wish to serve content in multi language:
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en)

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Jugurtha
I've maintained a blog and help a friend who owns a business promote on
Facebook.

Both are in French.

> _\- Lack of clarity about SEO rules in this regard. Eg: Will Spanish content
> rank higher than english one if I search in spanish? Or will google do a
> combined (transliterated) search and rank the best?_

In my experience, it will rank higher. My blog had one post (how to get a
debit card from a certain bank). It was a few years ago and people are still
commenting on it (I think 1000 comments). When it was self hosted, it was
ranked higher than the bank itself for the combination (card + bank name +
country) if I recall correctly.

The important thing is that it was comprehensive enough so the bloggers,
geeks, members of different forums in the country started sharing this link,
calling it a "gift", etc. I haven't done _any_ promotion. Basically just write
and forget. Content quality _is_ a sine qua non condition.

> _Top Trends show what is being searched for in english. No option to see
> search top trends by language . Any way around this?_

* Go to Google Trends.

* Now search for any string, like "fdsfjqklm".

* The resulting will have a drop down menu with countries it didn't have on the first page.

* Choose a country.

* Remove the search string.

Or, this link. If I want what people in Spain are looking for, here:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=ES](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=ES)

Let's say people in Venezuela:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=VE](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=VE)

Thailand:
[https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=TH](https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=TH)

As you can see, it shows what people are looking and not just in English but
in their native language as well. It's not what you asked for, but still not
too shabby because you can think about Spanish countries and then do a search,
or write a script that will do that for you for every Spanish speaking
country.

> _\- Even if its a non-english website, what are best the practices for URLs?
> Should they still be in english or can we use the regional language?_

You don't seem to appreciate just how good it is to have non English content:

* There are a lot of people who don't speak English in every country.

* The bang for the bug in advertising is just _great_. 10,000 impressions cost about $1 for the French page. Sometimes, it is so low, Facebook displays it as 0. If it were in English, all this would be lost to click farms in India, Pakistan, or Egypt. (I've had a page in English, and it was cluttered with people who would just like that page and had nothing to do with the stuff in it). So, having a page not in English is _great_.

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z3t4
its all about the words.

