ASP.NET MVC 3 multilingual SEO?

Google does not only rely on you telling them what language your site is in, you only hint them. The pages will be analyzed and presented as a page in "German" or a page in "English" based on the language of the content.

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I'm currently writing an ASP. NET MVC 3 web application that supports multiple languages. I already managed to translate all the routes so that calls like: mysite.de/Kontakt" rel="nofollow">mysite.de/Kontakt and mysite.de/Contact" rel="nofollow">mysite.de/Contact will route to the same Controller/Action.

By design it is so that when calling mysite.de the language (stored in the session object) will automatically be set to a default language (here German). The navigation of the site is then dynamically setup accordingly. The language in the session object can be changed by either hitting the "English version" link or when manually calling e.g. Www.mysite.de/Contact.

In this case it is recognized that the link (/Contact) matches a route that is defined as English and so I change the language in the session object to English. Of course the content of the sites is also localized. My question now is how does that cooperate with SEO, especially with Google?

I already add the Content-Language meta tag dynamically to each page. So I think that with a proper sitemap. Xml should be sufficient.

Does Google recognize this correctly? Is it when searching Google in German that I get "Kontakt" as result and "Contact" when searching in English? Another issue is what happens when the link is the same for different languages?

E.g. The link to "Jobs" would/could be the same as well in English as in German. I hope that the question is understandable as my issue is rather complicated.

Cheers, Simon asp. Net-mvc asp. Net-mvc-3 seo asp.

Net-mvc-routing link|improve this question asked Jul 22 '11 at 6:53Simon Linder1,193313 95% accept rate.

Google does not only rely on you telling them what language your site is in, you only hint them. The pages will be analyzed and presented as a page in "German" or a page in "English" based on the language of the content. But your base assumption is correct.

Yes, if I search for your page in German, and Google has indexed the page as a page in German, Google will return Kontakt. As for your second question, unless you provide another mean to change the language other than the path (query string or language in browser setting), those links will only be in your default (German) language. If you would like them to appear in english, use a different, additional URL: Jobs-EN that you only have in your SiteMap.

Xml (and route, of course).

Ok, thank you. But as you said Google also analyzes the content of the page itself. Wouldn't Google recognize the the page /Jobs exists in both languages depending on the previous page it visits?

Lets suggest that Google visits the page /Kontakt where is a link to /Jobs meaning that the stored language (in the session) would be German and wouldn't be changed. Afterwards Google visits /Contact and follows the link to /Jobs (now in English). Therefore Google would have both /Jobs pages.

One in English, one in German. – Simon Linder Jul 22 '11 at 10:29 2 You should not rely on the crawler bot having the session state from a previous page. As Google themselves state in their Webmaster Guidelines: "Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site.

" – RickardN Jul 22 '11 at 11:18.

E.g. The link to "Jobs" would/could be the same as well in English as in German. You might consider having the language as part of your URL, for example: mysite.de/de/Kontakt mysite.de/en-us/Contact mysite.de/en-gb/Contact.

You might consider having the language as part of your URL, for example.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.