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htmlpdfseomultiple-languages

Best structure for anchor links to different language versions of a PDF document?

Say I have a website with a product "A" page available in 3 different languages under 3 different domains:

  • version.co.uk/products/product-a.html
  • version.es/products/producto-a.html
  • version.fr/products/produit-a.html

On these product pages there is a link to the manual of the websites language, and the manuals of the other languages. In order to keep each website content 100% language pure I give the other languages a rel="no-follow".

Example for English website including Spanish and French manuals.

  • version.co.uk/files/manual-en.pdf
  • version.co.uk/files/manual-es.pdf (rel="no-follow")
  • version.co.uk/files/manual-fr.pdf (rel="no-follow")

The Spanish and French domains will have similar setup with only their own language version manual being indexed.

Now I want to add even more manuals in other languages, but I do not want to add more domains. This gives me the problem that all the additional manuals in other languages will never be indexed, since they will be excluded on all three current websites.

I do not want to "defile" the languages of the domains with a lot of links to different language content, but I do want the additional manuals indexed.

What is the proper way to add links to new manuals in other languages?

  1. Add them without rel="no follow" and keep excluding the other two main domain languages.
  2. Add them with rel="no follow" except on 1 of the main domains (.co.uk for example) through which they will be indexed. Treating the .co.uk as an international landing page.
  3. Another solution?
Solution

  • I don’t think the nofollow link type is appropriate in your case:

    The nofollow keyword indicates that the link is not endorsed by the original author or publisher of the page, or that the link to the referenced document was included primarily because of a commercial relationship between people affiliated with the two pages.

    You seem to endorse the links, and it’s not advertisement.

    Instead, simply use the hreflang attribute to denote which language the link target is in:

    <!-- on an English page -->
<a href="/files/manual-fr.pdf" hreflang="fr">French Manual</a>

    (In case you are translating the website in all these languags, too, it might be a better idea to just provide a language switcher. In that case, users on the French site would only see the link to the French manual.)