Multi-lingual site SEO problem

[thebigdishman]

Hi

I am developing a website that uses the 27 principal languages of the European Union (soon to be thirty) using a database that feeds into the site depending on which language the user selects.

I have the thorny problem of ensuring good keyword ranking on search engines in as many of these languages as possible, and definitely in more than just English. I do need good rankings in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, etc etc; (apologies to East European EU readers).

Putting that many keywords in the Keyword metatag just isn't going to work as I will rapidly hit the recommended 250 character count, even with only about forty essential words in all languages. So I thought one way of doing it would be to attach the keywords to images as ALT="same keyword in various languages". I ran a test on sitereportcard.com and it doesn't pick up the keywords there or from the database because the meat of the site has to be in IFRAMEs; call me old-fashioned, but I've tried the alternatives and the layout becomes a nightmare.

I don't want to go down the route of loads of text in the same colour as the background as I know that can quickly get you kicked off search engines.

So:

Could I use hover text drawn from the database over images in the main default file that search engines would pick up on, and if so, how?

Could I get the default file to open the database and allow the search engine access to the entire text on entry for spidering purposes without slowing the site down too much, and again, if so, how?

Has anyone any other sensible suggestions?

The site is in ASP / SQL / Access (no, I really am not old-fashioned, I've just never done PHP, and I'd rather stick to what I know).

Sorry, I can't give you the URL, as it's more than my life is worth at the moment.

[incrediblehelp]

I dont understand the issue. Are you talking about title attributes and meta description tags? If so why would you try to have all languages in each of these fields at the same time?

[bobchrist]

I am not sure you're using same domain name and providing option for changing languages, in my opinion it would be good if you create individual website of specific language with country specific tld and optimize them for their respective location.

[thebigdishman]

Thanks for your responses.

Dealing with the languages first - put yourself in the position of someone living in one of the 27 EU countries, with 24 main languages (including Bulgarian and Greek which use different character sets and Maltese which has some very odd characters), and numerous sub-languages like Welsh, Basque, Breton and Catalan. Also bear in mind the legal framework we have in the EU. That's why it has to be a single website.

That is what presents the problem of the keywords. In the metatags I am limited to 100 characters in title and description, and 250 characters in keywords.

Keywords within the site itself are drawn from the database and only English appears on the home page.

Sorry for the delay in replying. I have been away for a couple of days.

[kevsta]

you are never going to make a website rank great in 30 different languages using meta keywords tags or alt text.

you need to geo serve the right site to the right area IMO, and forget about meta keywords theyre a waste of the time it takes to write them.

[Jean-Luc]

Also bear in mind the legal framework we have in the EU. That's why it has to be a single website.

That is what presents the problem of the keywords. In the metatags I am limited to 100 characters in title and description, and 250 characters in keywords.

Keywords within the site itself are drawn from the database and only English appears on the home page.

So if the "main" home page is in English, its title, keywords and description should all be in English. I guess there should be other home pages in French, German, Spanish, and so on and each should have a title, keywords and description in the respective language. You have to use different URL's for each language version of a page.

Do not see Google as indexing web sites. Google indexes pages and each page can be in a different language.

Jean-Luc

[optifocus]

IMO, if you really want to have good rankings on each n every 30 languages it;s quite difficult, but not at all impossible.

promote your website in each and every countries local dirs, and classifieds.

you will get good results.

[thebigdishman]

Hi all

Once again, thanks for the replies. Everything taken on board.

[sweet15]

What are you talking about please tell in detail.

[infrascape]

try to get title meta tags dynamically for all languages.