I am currently working on a project where I will have some pages translated entirely (meta-information on the project) and some pages (articles) only in one language, but still with the interface in many languages.
How should I handle this with regard to Google etc.?
I want the information to be available in all languages, so that people can find it with search terms in their local language, but can I get duplicate content problems if the articles are available on /fr/my-nice-article /de/my-nice-article with the same article text (not translated) and only translated interface ("Ecris un commentaire", "Schreibe einen Kommentar").
AFAIK Google automatically determines what language your content is written in. It users the language of the majority of all text. If you want to explicitly specify it, you can use the following snippet:
<meta name="language" content="de" />
Google, of course, shows only the pages in the user's language (so German Google users only see the de-content).
Found something directly from Google
Websites that provide content for different regions and in different
languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but
available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long
as the content is for different users in different countries. While we
strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different
group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible.
There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing
crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag.
However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on
different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/
show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a
preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element)
appropriately.
Related
I am having trouble finding clear information regarding WCAG 2.1 compliance and user-generated content. Would a site fail compliance if the end users of the site created or uploaded content that would fail to conform to requirements?
Some examples could be the user uploading video content without captions or subtitles, or gifs that contain flashing content, or using a page editor to create different levels of html heading tags throughout the page for their personal preference but could interfere with screen reading technology etc...
What do you do about content which you cannot control?
You have two options - force users to upload WCAG compliant content (which is near impossible, but you can improve things by insisting on alt text, .srv or similar format caption files for videos etc. and explaining why it is important) or you use a statement of partial compliance on the site, of which their are two versions.
Statement of Partial Conformance - Third Party Content
The W3C recognises that you cannot control third party content, including user uploaded and user linked (embedded) content.
Now here you do have two realistic options, depending on your available resources.
Option 1 - maintain the pages
If the content is uploaded to your website then you have the option to "repair" it. You can put a system in place to monitor newly added content and add / adjust the markup, alt attributes etc. to make the page compliant.
You would still add a statement of partial compliance but would also state that pages will get updated and maintained to provide full compliance within 2 business days.
Due to the heavy resource requirements on busy sites this may or may not be an option.
However this would be the preference if you are able to do this (to reduce costs you can combine this with any mediation / approval processes you have in place. For content that cannot be made accessible, for example your scenario of flashing content, you can have a simple warning box that can be used to explain the problems with the content.)
Option 2 - accept that user content is not compliant
A "statement of partial conformance" may be made that the page does not conform, but could conform if certain parts were removed.
You detail which pages / page types are not compliant, but explain which parts are compliant and which parts need to be removed in order to make the page compliant.
I would put a warning before any content that explains that it is user generated content and link this to your partial compliance statement. It could have a positive effect where a few people take the time to learn about accessibility.
It must be noted that third-party implementation and third-party content are two distinct things:
Using a page editor that generate bad heading tags is on the author's control.
Permitting third-party users to add content to the website is not (but can be) on the author's control,
For instance, integrating a twitter feed written by your social media manager is on your control : appropriate image alternative and text can be made, and using the API instead of the iframe integration can provide sufficient accessibility.
If you let people upload a video without giving them the ability to provide captions, then it's on your responsibility. If they can choose their own provider (like Youtube) but do not provide captions, then it's their responsability.
See Partial conformance claims due to third party content
When an author makes a decision to use a third party implementation, they should choose products that meet WCAG requirements. [...] However, if the page does not conform to WCAG only for reasons that are legitimately outside the author's control then the author can make a claim of partial conformance. It is important to recognize that this is a statement of non-conformance
I want to provide some very simple content to the user that describes how to use a web form.
This text could just as easily be written in HTML, however, convention among the content writers is to write all help text in Word, convert it to PDF, and then put a link to the PDF at the top of the web application.
Assuming that the PDFs are tagged and/or 508 compliant, does this practice present any accessibility concerns?
There are two issues posed with your question:
(1) PDF when it could be HTML
This requires the user to have software that reads PDF format.
This requires the PDF to be tagged and made accessible.
This interferes with usability and is problematic for some users, especially on mobile where the focus switch to a different (PDF reader) application looses focus on your web page or web browser.
(2) "breaking" accessibility
The accessibility of your web content is evaluated on its own merits: you certainly can have an accessible PDF but if your reasoning is your HTML does not need to be accessible because of that, you are not accessible and fail your end-users.
There is also a hidden use-case for accessibility or usability you might not consider: web crawlers and indexing. Users rely on web searching to find content and your PDF is not indexed to map to your web page content in most search engines, so users will not find the help they need.
Most reasonable people involved with Section 508 would likely agree it is not accessible, as it fails 1194.22(n): When electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.
§1194.22 Web-based intranet and internet information and applications
It is possible to convert Word content to HTML, and you are always highly encouraged to write the content as web content, because there are sometimes issues we simply accessing, and opening PDFs depending on the device they are using.
But to answer your question: no, as long as your PDF is accessible. I'd suggest putting it through something like the accessibility audit tool if you have Adobe Acrobat. If you don't, you might give content creators a simple check list, such as:
does your image have alt text if needed? (consider a decision tree/flowchart, example)
are your headings marked properly using the built-in styles?
are your tables formatted correctly? also tables are not used for layout
You'll probably notice these are typical guidelines when writing web content, but also apply to documents (Word, pdf, etc.).
WCAG has a list of PDF Techniques that you also want to check, but generally if you make sure that everything is tagged/styled/marked properly in Word, it should save to PDF with the correct tags and such.
I am considering using KooBoo CMS ASP / MVC CMS for a client.
One of their requirements is good SEO optimisation. What is the best way to do this in KooBoo. How does it compare to, say, Orchard CMS in this area? (and Wordpress, say).
I am talking about things like keywording, friendly URL's & generally behaving in a way Google likes and rewards in search results.
Thanks.
You can create the meta tags and description for each pages in KooBoo. Please following the step which is mentioned in kooboo help.
http://www.kooboo.com/docs/Kooboo-CMS/Page-settings
Please also see below link for URL rewriting of different site.
http://www.kooboo.com/docs/Kooboo-CMS/Kooboo-multi-sites-solution
I believe that extra support options were added for V4 of Kooboo. You now have a number of options.
Each Kooboo 'Site' has a 'System / Settings' page with a 'HTML Meta' section on it. This allows you to define site-wide meta tag values for all the common meta tags, as well as defining some of your own custom tags.
The same level of detail can be achieved on a page-level basis, where these values will be prefixed to the site-level values, allowing you to have titles like: -
You can also use tokens in the settings, that will get replaced with context-relevant values:
You also have a very high level of control over the URL's that Kooboo allows access to. Its default approach is for each piece of content to generate a SEO friendly "user key" that can be used to refer to the content. This User Key can then be used as part of the URL to access the page.
There is also native support for 'Robots.txt' and whilst generating a 'SiteMap.xml' is a little more hands-on, it offers perfect granular control for the developer: http://kooboo-cms.ru/articles/detail/sitemap-for-kooboo-cms/
I'm not yet familiar enough with Orchard to say if it offers the same level of SEO targetting, but I think Kooboo has all the major options nicely covered.
I'm creating a website template where the owner of the site will be able to choose a native language other than English and localize some content by themselves. Let me explain it better with the real situation right now: My site will have English and Turkish (my native language is Turkish, but THIS should be changeable and applied to any non-English language) versions of the main content titles, such as BLOG, PROJECTS, ABOUT, CONTACT etc, but number and name of these are completely dependent to the choice of the user, so I could open a new section named MySection, and it's title and it's native translation to Turkish will be stored in my DB (using EF). Also in my settings at the DB, the native language's code (in this case "tr") is stored. What is the most modular/organized way of sending the webpage content according to browser, just like this:
In DB, sections are organized this way (titles and their Turkish translations) (all these will be at arbitrary number and completely user created):
Title NativeTitle
---------------------
BLOG BLOG
PROJECTS PROJELER
ABOUT HAKKINDA
Also I have my native language setting (that I've created) setting as tr (which is up to the site owner and can be changed too). So, depending on the user's browsers preferred language setting, I want to show the Turkish content, and for all the other language preferences, including (obviously) English, I want to show the default English content. Localization for a specific language of static content is pretty straightforward with RESX files, but in my situation, I neither have static content nor a specific known native language, so all my data comes from the DB. I want to code this as less as possible and as declarative as possible. What is the best practice of doing this? Is checking the setting of the native language and the Current Culture in a page and if they are equal sending the native else sending the default title the only way? It WILL definitely work, but what if I want to extend it to other parts of the site? I don't want if's and else's everywhere around the site, I need some kind of a centralized string mapping system. What's the best way?
You can override the InitializeCulture ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.ui.page.initializeculture.aspx ) method in your base Page to dynamically load your localized content by checking the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture property ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.cultureinfo.currentuiculture.aspx )
I wrote a trivia game in Flex (flash). The site is written entirely in Flex. Almost all of the text is pulled from a database. It also has a fair number of images. The image file paths are pulled from the db.
My site's not getting any hits. If I check on google site:mysite it the url appears only. I know that inbound links are important and I'll try to get some. At the moment, I don't have any inbound links. In google webmaster tools, if I look under the site's keywords, there are 0. My sites been up for about a month.
Any suggestions on how to improve this situation?
(I've seen a few people ask for help with Flash SEO and the comments tended to be of the "don't use Flash" variety-- which aren't too helpful if you've written something in Flex/Flash).
Thank you.
-Laxmidi
Check out this article: Read Here
SEO FLASH PROGRAMMING
My recommended Flash SEO method uses a
DIV with search-engine-accessible,
primary content, and an open source
Javascript function called swfobject()
to detect when browsers are capable of
viewing Flash. When an appropriate
version of Flash player is present,
the Javascript manipulates the page's
document object model (DOM) to replace
the primary content with the Flash
movie. Most search engine spiders
can't handle Flash, so they will elect
to view the primary content. The
primary content may contain links,
headings, styled text, images—anything
we can add to an ordinary HTML page.
With SEO copyediting and coding skills
applied to the primary content, Flash
becomes a non-issue.
Flash accessibility programming isn't
spamming, as long as the primary
content and the visible movie are
essentially the same. The World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI) specifically states
that multimedia content should have an
alternative representation available.
Accessibility programming creates the
benefit of presenting visual
information without losing the
visitors and search engines who depend
upon textual content.
As of July 2007, I discussed this
method with Dan Crow of Google. He
warned that this programming method
could draw attention because of the
possibility for abuse. If you use this
method, make sure the alternative
content is a faithful representation
of the Flash content, and avoid
combining this with other coding
methods that could be abused. While
this SEO method is not abusive, it is
aggressive because there is a small
risk that the search engines could
mistakenly decide that the primary
content is a form of cloaking.
I would also create a sitemap and link to multiple keyword rich landing pages about your game with a link back to the game. The more content google has to bite into the better changes someone will find you.
You also need to market your site...just because you build it doesn't mean they will come. Use twitter, facebook and any other form of social media to get the word out. You may also try buying a few bucks worth of ad words to start the ball rolling.
The solution to only the url appearing in Google is probably as simple as adding a meta description tag.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
It would also probably be beneficial to provide a description or instructions for the trivia game in HTML alongside the Flex part of the website, if this is possible.