Usually, we do not cover forum threads, but from time to time, one does pop up which gathers my attention and is blog worthy. Today on DigitalPoint, a thread caught my eye which is titled : Different links with many language make site popular.
The DigitalPoint member says that “If you have many sites with different language link to you, then your site is more popular than only one language link in.”
I really do not think that sites with more links from various languages have more value than other sites. In fact, I’ll put this in the SEO Myth bucket and send this mindset down the river. However, I do believe that sometimes we tend to forget that even if we run a site which is in English, Spanish or some other language, by only attracting or building links in our own language, we are missing a major chunk of the globe’s linking opportunities.
In terms of Search Engine Journal, one of our most powerful links is from the Google China Blog. The link from the Google China Blog is not only of high value (owned by Google, extremely relevant, lots of relevant incoming links, yada yada yada) but it also drives a decent amount of traffic whenever the blog is updated.
Furthermore, I also work with a handful of companies who target Hispanics in the United States, who sometimes search using the Spanish language. I’ve found that attracting links to these clients in foreign language blogs and sites, does help with rankings for relevant terms in both English and Spanish (dependent upon the anchor text), and since the core theme of the sites we’ve acquired links from is relevant to the target site, then the traffic is also relevant too.
This reminds me of when I met with some members of the Google Japan team in Tokyo years ago. We were discussing anchor text and Google Japan results. One interesting example they used was if you search for Stanford in the Japanese phonetic version of “su-ta-n-fo-du” in katakana; the homepage for Stanford University is #1. On the Stanford.edu page there is not one instance of this term in katakana (Japanese), but the page is still listed in the top result. Why? Because it’s Stanford, and the amount of Japanese katakana anchor text pointing to it from sites with “.jp” or “.co.jp” domains is enormous.
In this situation, an English site is benefiting from foriegn language links.
Take that to the local level (your site) and just think, if you have a site about Forex, which is popular across the world, would you only want links from English sites on .com, .net or .org domains? No. First of all it would not be natural and secondly, you’d be ignoring your global customers.
Do you build links from foreign language sites? And what is your experience?
Comments
7 responses so far ↓
Directory on Mar 25, 2008 at 8:33 am
Foreign site links are very good for targeting foreign keywords. A couple of solid links from even foreign language directories will push your targeted non-English to the top as long as your website have the supporting content.
Joost de Valk on Mar 25, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Loren, you do realize that if the fix for Google bombing was a REAL fix, Stanford wouldn’t be ranking for that anymore? :)
Japanese SEO - 海外SEO on Mar 26, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hi Loren,
Yes, I’m bluilding links from foreign language sites, say from SEJ. ;-)
There are a lot of foreign sites where I can use Japanese on anchor texts. Even if I can’t, I get some of link juice from them though I could have no benefit in terms of link reputation.
From my experience, I realize links from foreign launguage site are very effecitve to boost rainking at least for websites in Japan.
Thank you.
Spain holiday on Mar 27, 2008 at 4:37 am
Our site runs in 7 different languages but before that we only had the english .com version. And that was promoted heavily with links from not .com domains and with anchor text in foreign languages. Now we have it all in place with correct national domains etc, but still our .com domain often rank higher than the national domains, when searching in a foreign language. That clearly proves that it is wise to use a wide link building strategy that crosses borders.
So go for it and benefit of it…
Cheap Web Hosting Phil on Apr 22, 2008 at 8:49 am
I would suggest that the foreign language content/incoming link combination is by far the strongest. I’m sure if there was sutanfodu.jp which was a really useful site about Stanford written in Japanese then that would be number two pretty soon or even beat Stanford in the SERPS in the long run. But that is a hard call to make since the actual object of desire is about “a foreign language sevice”.
If you google “voiture” (car) in Google.fr most users don’t want cars.com to come out on top. All I’m saying is that users should diversify their content along with their links.
Hardware Software News on May 30, 2008 at 1:40 am
Nice Article. I am having a link from PR7 Romania blog.
Edwinsdesignlab on Jun 17, 2008 at 8:08 am
In my experience, foreign links with a related topic and an with your keyword in de anchor text will boost your serps in the local search engine.
Which means that cars.com can have a good ranking in Google.fr for “voiture” if there are sufficiant inbound links from .fr domains with that anchor.
Cars.com can have higher rankings in .com for “cars” when they get .fr inbound links anchorred “cars”.
Anyway to my knowledge, at least pagerank distribution is global..
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