Google have posted some useful guidance on their blog about creating multilingual websites.
By sticking to only one language per page and avoiding side-by-side translations, you are making it a lot easier for them to determine the main language of your page. Google recommend using the same language for all elements of a
page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc. Remember, Google
ignores all code-level language information, from “lang” attributes to
Document Type Definitions (DTD).
page: headers, sidebars, menus, etc. Remember, Google
ignores all code-level language information, from “lang” attributes to
Document Type Definitions (DTD).
They also provide some additional pointers on how to construct URLs that help users determine what language they are viewing in:
e.g.
http://example.co.uk/en/english.html – to show you are viewing the page in French
http://example.co.uk/fr/francais.html – to show you are viewing the page in French
