Cover page and SEO - thin content

Hi,  I have a squarespace website with two languages.  I use a cover page as the main page and from there there are buttons to either language. This causes there to be thin content on the cover page and I am worried it will affect SEO. 

Any thoughts/advice?

Many thanks in advance! 

Yasmine

Hi @YasmineU,

To confirm, is this your main homepage?

If so, it could hurt SEO as you want to have at least 300 words of content on every page to ensure Google doesn't class your site as having thin content.

A way around this could be to add a FAQ at the bottom of the page to add content without stopping users from going to their respective languages.

You could always have different FAQs for different languages to make sure they're actually providing value to the readers rather than just being filler text.

Sorry but I would not do that, I would ditch the cover page and implement hreflang properly and manually across the website There are some scripts that can be used to inject code so that language versions are replaced in the  menus, to avoid having two language menus appearing at the same time on a page.

You can use FAQs to bump up optimisation on a page once you have established Google thinks that the page should be ranking for. You can use Google Search Console to get a sense of this.

Here is an example of the code I was talking about
https://www.bradgood.net/articles/multi-language-content-on-any-squarespace-template

You might need to setup redirects within the website to remap pages to the new structure, and HREFLANG will help ensure that the right google index is indexing the right version of the website.

See our website in the signature where we do all of this on our live site.
 

Good luck.

G.

I have the same issue as the OP. 
Coverpage is used to place three action button for 3 different languages (English, French, German). Once the visitors choose their language they are staying within the same language unless they return to that homepage. Only when you click on the logo, you'll return to this coverpage.
I noticed that this system started to perform less on SEO. 

For the home page I'm thinking of replacing the cover page with a standard layout page, with a hero image and headline, allowing me to add crucial information for SEO. Then having three buttons pointing to the other languages. You'll either stay in English “Continue in English”, or choose one of the other two languages.

Here I see the problem that the English menu is visible. 
Is there a workaround to prevent the menu from showing?

Appreciate your input!

Hi there,

I'm working with a client with an 'enter site' cover page (that does have a description of the business) that takes you to her home page. I'm concerned that this isn't great for SEO and considering telling her she should take it down. Does anyone have more insight into whether this is hurting her searchability?

Many thanks,

Garlande

Hi @garlandehaney in general don't use a cover page as Home page.

Thank you @ChristineDarby! I recommended she remove it, and it was definitely the right call 🙂