SEO for spanish website

[seoug_2005]

Hi,

A client has given us the site  http://www.comtranslations.com/Home.html  for optimization. He wants to optimize only the spanish part ( the link is on the top right ).  By clicking on the link Espanol, the url opened is -  http://www.comtranslations.com/Principal.html. He wants seo for this website for spanish  keywords.

The keywords are -

Traducción
Traductor
traducir español inglés
traducción

My question is how do we go about this ?

Shall we purchase a software that translates spanish to english ?

Thanks

[fmorenop]

On gwt is easy to target web to local spanish users, but for seo focused is better a local tdl like .es domain.

[ericmyrpmstudios]

Although I think the topic of this thread has already been addressed I wanted to add something in case someone stumbled upon it for future reference: The topic of SEO for an international site.

The site mentioned above wanted to rank for Spanish terms and the answers provided recommended buying URLs in different countries so that users of that country know that the site is in their language. For example I am in Spain and see a search result pop up as a dot.com and dot.com/es. It has been shown that the resident will likely favor the site that is more local to them (.com/es) and chances are (let's not forgot about SEO) Google will run a better chance of ranking your content in that country.

Anyhow, all of this I learned here, on SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

I agree that if you run a translation site you need real translators too, not Google Translate, to capture all of the nuances of language.  I'm not sure that our friends in England would know what "for shizzle"means as a example of language and culture.

The above is based on experience too. We run a real estate site in Brazil for investors who want to buy property in the US and we also have a dental forum in the UK and Brazil so that we can capture those markets and to get help ranking there.

[SEM-Freak]

Hi, I think as you offer translation services, you have an especially strong need to have real people translate the relevant parts of the website (rather than software).

With regards to geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The suggestion is to geo-target the /es folder rather than just a page. So all the Spanish elements are targeted within that folder.

Resources permitting and having a good understanding of your / your client's markets I would suggest extending this to the other Spanish speaking countries you are targeting. The nuances of language are enough to warrant this and it is an opportunity to demonstrate expertise in translation.

[SKE]

Geo targeting to Spain may not be the best way to go with this as the site offers Mexican (Spanish) translations, and by geo targeting just Spain you may miss this market.

I would also agree that a machine translation is not the way to go especially as the client seems to have access to Spanish translation experts.

[mosaicpro]

I think this explains it all.

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[seoug_2005]

Thanks. I understood your point.

Can we use geographic targetting for the spanish version (  http://www.comtranslations.com/Principal.html )  in Google webmaster tools ?

[mosaicpro]

/es/ or /es is up to you has no real difference just decide on one and keep the same link through the whole website.

/es is good for users ex: spanish users will want to look for your website and they would know /es is in spanish  (after they have viewed your website and found that you have a spanish version).   Is good for seo to keep url simple and easy.   /es better than principal.html

[seoug_2005]

Thanks for your response.

Why is it good to have a url like domain.com/es/

Is last  slash necessary ? or can it be    domain.com/es

[mosaicpro]

First of all i think it would be better to have an url like   domain.com/es/

if you have different languages.

It would be ideal to hire someone who is fluent in Spanish as software translation does not sound right.

Hope it helps.