I have this idea to redesign my main website, as my site has 11 languages, and need the opinions of those here with the right knowledge.
Rather than having the boring row of flags that a visitor can select I have this crazy idea. If I redesign the main index page to display a jquery carrousel of the various country flags, with the country name below in said language, so as a visitor clicks the flag of their language, they are then taken to the main index page of that language.
So the question is: although is a nice idea, would this affect my ranking in any way?
The ideas does sound nice (although, of course, it really depends how it is being carried out) and I don’t thnk is crazy.
Regarding your ranking, it should hurt much or even nothing if your markup is good and the robots from the search engines are able to read the content of your main page as they do today.
For me, it’s a logical idea and I haven’t seen it before anywhere. As my topic “Metaphysics” is not your every day subject, it may just work very well. Many thanks for your opinion.
the idea is quite good…
however it will help in improving your rank if the content that you are putting is unique,revalant and worth for the visitors…!!
Many thanks for your input. Its mainly so the visitor can select their language before proceeding on, rather than being forced to English and then trying to find the other languages. So can I suume rightly that you are refering to the following?
As I understand it, these two are key features on any webpage and key to ranking? correct me if I am wrong. I know there is another entry for language, which I have on each webpage, but not sure what you would put when a single page is multiple languages?
If you do it without JavaScript first it shouldn’t demote you in the search engines as it should appear the same as what you have now. If you rely on JavaScript or Cookies then it will.
I’m not sure how you’re doing it at the moment, but if the url’s unique for each language, ie en.world-metaphysics.com for example then it will improve your ranking as you will be indexed for each language
EDIT: Page description and keywords have little relevance to the main search engines. Good content is worth a lot more. In fact, stuffing keywords in either can be detrimental to you SEO.
Description is used to show your prefered text to describe your page when people find you in the searches
[FONT=verdana]I have to disagree with the others. A carousel would like nice, and might make you look good in the eyes of your visitors. But would it really be easier for your visitors to use? Why would interacting with a carousel be easier than just clicking on a flag?
True, a simple array of flags is boring, as you say. But so what? Your aim at this stage is not to entertain or impress the visitor. It’s to get them to the appropriate language pages as quickly and as intuitively as possible.
Very interesting point, as I have the languages after the main URL, i.e. world-metaphysics.com/spanish and not before as your above example. What are the advantages of your example over what I currently have?
You have made a very valid point. It would look good, but perhaps not very practical. I did think of having a pull down menu; certainly for mobile devices, but was thinking of a different method than flags.
I like to visualise what the design is before embarking out on spending time creating it, it’s just that my mind is blank at the moment.
[FONT=verdana]Morrile, I wouldn’t go for pull-down menu for the same reason that I voted against the carousel: it’s one more hurdle for the user to jump over before they get to where they want to do.
Remember, the page from which they select the language will have no other significant content (because, at that stage, you don’t know which language to display that content in). So it’s not as if the array of flags will be competing for screen space with anything else. Make the flags nice and large, and not too close to each other, and the user will easily be able to see the one he wants and go straight to it.
That said, there is another issue. How do you know that the visitor will land on the page that has the flags? More likely, they will reach your site via a search engine, and that will take them to whatever page on the site has the content they are interested in. If that page is not in the visitor’s language, they will need a quick way of reaching the correct language from that point. They won’t know about the “flags” page, and they won’t have any obvious way of getting there.
With that in mind, maybe you need to have the language-selection mechanism on every page. But, again, it has to obvious that it’s there and easy to use: perhaps a row of flags at the top of the page, permanently docked to the window (so that it doesn’t scroll when the page scrolls). It would be no good having a link named “Select language”, because presumably the visitor won’t understand “Select language” in any language other than their own.
I have abandoned the idea of selecting the language first. visitors will visit the English; as the primary language, and from there a small row of flags from which they can change to another language of their choice. It’s still early days and I think I will take my leave and think about this when I return fresh.