Hi All, I would like to create a website both in German, French and in English. I want to target people LIVING in Europe. I have some questions concerning SEO: How to best optimize multi language websites? Using subdomains (de.mysite.com) and optimizing them separately. Or different suffixes for each language (mysite.com/fr/quelque-chose) Or even buy different domains and separate everything (mysite.de, mysite.fr, mysite.com) Hosting location: Should I host in Germany? Or can I go with Bluehost, which is from America and totally disconnected? Content: Say I have content in English, and I use google translator to show my content in German for particular visitors, I assume this translated content won't rank for any German keywords? In other words, if somebody searches something in German, my content won't match ever, since it's only translated right?
I will prefer using the subdomains (de.mysite.com), it will be better for SEO For the hosting, it will be better to host in the country you are targeted but this is optional And the answer for the content question is YES.
why do you support that is better for SEO de.mysite.com ? I usually use in my sites mysite.com/de it this is a wrong way or the same ?
Suppose that you would create a real multi-language site not a machine translated one, I would strongly recommend using separate domains. Different directories are the worst solution, subdomains can be optimised but still a bit harder to get them to the top (For instance many German directories accept only tld's, sometimes you can get in with subdomains, but rarely with deep links.). Anyway never use subdomains or directory names such as de or fr, because it does not contain any useful keywords. Use deutsch.mysite.com or mysite.com/francais/quelue-chose or instead of the language, or use your most important keyword translated in the corresponding language. Your auto-translated content will rank for some long tail keywords because the weird text automated translators create sometimes matches certain rarely used search expressions not present virtually on any other sites (written by human beings . But to achieve more than a handful of daily visitors coming from Germany and French-speaking countries you should get backlinks from German and French sites respectively. Promote this kind of useless content is difficult because perhaps only the social bookmarking sites are those where you can get some links, otherwise you will have to rely on paid links or automated link exchange systems.
You can try taking domain with extensions of different language or region, even you can have subdomains for that language. You should do seo in the sites of particular language and generate backlinks for it.
What about if you use like ?, it would be better for seo? so I am thinking to use this! mydomain.com(english) mydomain.net(spanish) mydomain.org(french) mydomain.info(portuguese) Any Experience of this? or suggestion ?
- Use subdomains for the different languages. Pointing an .de domain towards your .de subdomain is an option userfriendly and when it us userfriendly most of the time search engines like it! - Use a European host (prefer DE/UK/FR - English is your main target so I would go for a UK host, an option is starting with a US host most of the time cheaper when it develops well you can change hosts. In my opinion this factor hasnt much influence as long your pagespeed is ok). - If your translations are made on the fly by Google translation and it isnt stored in your website (db) it wont rank I think (if I understand your correctly).