Has anyone done any SEO for a foreign language site? To be more specific, a site in Chinese or any language not using the english alphabet.

Do these sites follow the same SEO principles as an english site? or are there other factors to consider?

We have done a few for multilingual sites. Things to consider:

1. Knowing the popular search engines for that language
2. Directories popular to that language
3. Terms used in that language is based on localization and not merely translation.
4. Character encoding
5. Where to host the site
6. Type of domain name (country-specific vs .com)

Many SEO for English sites guidelines still apply.

thanks for the info ewc21!

would you be able to shed light on any effective tools to see search volume for keywords in other languages other than english?

I see that the overture and google tool seem to do it, but just wanted to know if there are any better ones out there. Keyword discovery doesn't seem to pick up stats for the other languages.

Russian and Polish languages have their own unique features and we cannot literally translate the keywords while optimizing.We need to know the local dialect and then proceed.For all these, we need a team of experts who can handle any unforeseen challenges.

Russian and Polish languages have their own unique features and we cannot literally translate the keywords while optimizing.

When it comes to Russian, be aware that one of Google's founders is fluent in at least one of the languages of the former USSR.

The 2 bity characters are a pain for ppc... fewer words.

There is no difference in how to optimize it is making sure you are using the language right and the various quirks of the language do not break the spiders reading of your site.

would you be able to shed light on any effective tools to see search volume for keywords in other languages other than english?


Unfortunately that's the big problem with it: Last time I checked..or well the last times (a few months ago) there were none...(and I doubt this has changed as I haven't heard any great news about any such tool).

For German/French I always just used the adwords tool and made sure it was showing volumes for the right language/the right geographical region (not sure how much of a role that plays, but I guess it can't hurt getting it right).

I also used inventory.de.overture com and inventory fr overture com but these tools seem to be down right now (not sure if they've been taken down for good or if they're just done as usual ;))...but didn't use the data for anything other than comparing it to the google data. The reason being:

google owns the search market in Germany/France (90% or so) and yahoo has more like 5 (or less) than that...So taking the 90% data and doing an "extrapolation" (trying to figure out what 100% would be) is usually a better idea than taking 5% and multiplying it by 20 in your head hoping to get an accurate volume.

However if google showed a high volume and overture showed a high volume, too I guess it's a good bet that the keyword actually has a high volume (though of course one should only look at it as relative volumes without caring too much about the actual figures which are usually way off anyways).

Another good idea with kw research in a foreign language for which you don't have a ton of tools is using common sense: Does it make sense that people would search for this a ton? Do a lot of people search for the same topic in English in the USA? Is there any reason why people in Germany/France would search a lot less for it? (for example it'd make sense that 'baseball' has a higher search volume in the US than it does in Germany where nobody really plays or cares for baseball)