Optimisation Idea Need Advice

[mikelc]

Hi everyone, I could do with a bit of advice about an idea I have. I run an online store which has the facility for supporting different languages, which I don’t use. It has occurred to me that I could use these alternate language versions of my site to add optimised content for the search engines plus get a whole load of extra pages into the search engine lists.

Would this be a worthwhile thing to do? And would it be advisable to target a particular phrase for each site version? e.g. 1 version targeting "discount product1", "discount product2" etc.

Cheers Mike

[Michael Martinez]

Unless you want to do business with people who are looking for content in other languages, there is no reason to do what you suggest.

[mikelc]

Hi, thanks for the reply. No i do not intend to target foreign speaking users. The idea was to create different versions of the same pages/products with different content all written in English. For example

English Version: "product"
German version: "cheap product"
Spanish version: "discount product"

It would be like having three different versions of my site all kind of rolled into one, with the search engines spidering all the different versions. The only reason I am thinking of using the language function is because it is already pre built into my site. I just want to use it for a different purpose to what the developers had intended.
It is just with my products that i sell i have a little bit of difficulty creating content that would not look silly to the user. This way I can keep my proper english version as it is, and create a paragraph of text for each product and add it to the other versions, which would really only be acting as an entry page for the users.

Thanks
Mike

[Michael Martinez]

I think that would be deceptive. It might certainly be detectable, and if a search engine catches you duplicating content like that, it may just serve up only one page.

[Gerardism]

Also, something else that you will want to think about, if you don't have someone inhouse that can take German, spanish (etc) calls, this can lead to a messy situation and probably more work than its worth.