{"id":370,"date":"2013-11-14T18:06:57","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T17:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/?p=370\/"},"modified":"2018-04-19T12:15:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-19T10:15:52","slug":"duplicate-content-multilingual-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/duplicate-content-multilingual-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"How to manage duplicate content on multilingual sites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, there are over a dozen reasons to <a title=\"Website translation TextMaster\" href=\"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/translation-services\/\" target=\"_blank\">translate your corporate website<\/a>: to boost sales, to reach new markets, to raise your credibility, etc. However, it\u2019s important to create a multilingual site properly, without rushing into it, for risk of creating <strong>duplicate content<\/strong>, which is <strong>heavily penalized by Google<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What is duplicate content?<\/h2>\n<p>To put it plainly, <strong>duplicate content means publishing the same content on different places on the internet<\/strong>. It\u2019s often used by spammers to cheat Google\u2019s algorithms and to boost their site\u2019s <a title=\"Black hat SEO definition\" href=\"http:\/\/www.webopedia.com\/TERM\/B\/Black_Hat_SEO.html\" target=\"_blank\">(blackhat) SEO<\/a>. The problem is that duplicate content raises many issues for search engines:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They don\u2019t know how to different and classify different version in their index<\/li>\n<li>They don\u2019t know which version of the pages to display in their results<\/li>\n<li>They often can\u2019t identify which web content is the original and which one to display<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Since duplicate content decreases the overall quality of online content, Google punishes offenders by drastically reducing their search engine rankings, or blocking them altogether (especially in the latest Google Penguin update).<\/p>\n<p>Developers and bloggers are now asking themselves the <strong>million dollar question<\/strong> (we\u2019re not exaggerating \u2013 if you get blacklisted by Google and your web traffic plummets, it could cost you a million dollars in sales):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><strong>Does Google consider translations in one or more languages as duplicate content?<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The short answer, according to <a title=\"Matt Cutts translated content duplicate content\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UDg2AGRGjLQ\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Cutts<\/a>, is <strong>no<\/strong>, but there are cases where your translated content can be considered spam. The secret is knowing what Google allows and what it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>English web content + French web content = 2 unique contents<\/h2>\n<p>As a general rule, Google considers English content and its French translation as two separate types of content. Search engines know that this is meant for two separate audiences and is therefore not considered spam.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Beware of automatic translations<\/h2>\n<p>Did you hire a professional to translate your website? Then you have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if you used Google Translate or a similar free translation tool, it\u2019s considered automatically-generated content, which <strong>Google will punish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Quality content always pays off<\/h2>\n<p>Even though machine translation has really evolved in recent years, it can never truly replace the work of a professional. Free translation tools don\u2019t take into account cultural context, writing style and industry-specific terminology.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, <strong>Google isn\u2019t the big bad wolf trying to bring down your business<\/strong>; they\u2019re simply trying to make sure that good content wins out over spam. The easiest solution (free machine translation) isn\u2019t always the best, especially if you don\u2019t want to face off against Google Penguin.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lesson learned:<\/strong> professional translation not only gives you high quality multilingual content, but also lets you avoid unpleasant SEO surprises.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Until next time!<\/p>\n<p>The <a title=\"TextMaster\" href=\"http:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">TextMaster<\/a> Team<\/p>\n<p><!--HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><span id=\"hs-cta-wrapper-f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03\" class=\"hs-cta-wrapper\"><span id=\"hs-cta-f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03\" class=\"hs-cta-node hs-cta-f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03\"><!-- [if lte IE 8]>\n\n\n<div id=\"hs-cta-ie-element\"><\/div>\n\n\n<![endif]--><a href=\"https:\/\/cta-redirect.hubspot.com\/cta\/redirect\/2680086\/f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"hs-cta-img-f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03\" class=\"hs-cta-img\" style=\"border-width: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/no-cache.hubspot.com\/cta\/default\/2680086\/f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03.png\" alt=\"Translation and website localisation: best practices\" width=\"750\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/span><script charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"https:\/\/js.hscta.net\/cta\/current.js\"><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> hbspt.cta.load(2680086, 'f58bd6e8-1e19-41f4-a8f8-93898c5ced03', {}); <\/script><\/span><!-- end HubSpot Call-to-Action Code --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, there are over a dozen reasons to <a title=\"Website translation TextMaster\" href=\"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/translation-services\/\" target=\"_blank\">translate your corporate website<\/a>: to boost sales, to reach new markets, to raise your credibility, etc. However, it\u2019s important to create a multilingual site properly, without rushing into it, for risk of creating <strong>duplicate content<\/strong>, which is <strong>heavily penalized by Google<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What is duplicate content?<\/h2>\n<p>To put it plainly, <strong>duplicate content means publishing the same content on different places on the internet<\/strong>. It\u2019s often used by spammers to cheat [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2357,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/2357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.textmaster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}