How to design international website

I'm designing a international website which will consist from different languages. Each language will have the same content.

Here is my question: Is it better to put every language site on separate subdomain (country.mysite.com) or is it better that I use directory structure to separate different languages (www.mysite.com/country) ???

How does Google calculate PR, incoming links and SERP position for a subdomains? Is Google going to include all my subdomains in SERPs under one keyword or only one domain? Does Google seperate SERP position and PR for every subdomain or is this based on domain name?

I hope you know what I'm trying to say

 

For a specific country the best chances of landing on that language's search engine would be to register a domain of that country.

Otherwise, I prefer to use "www.site.com/country" format. It preserves the domain structure for PR purposes while making it easier to maintain.

Hope this helps.

 

Personally, I would go with the subdomain option as it gives you more flexibility in the long term just in case you need to set up co-located servers.

That way you could put a cn.website.com server in China, and a de.website.com server in Europe etc.

You might not need that today for traffic managment, but make the presumption that you will in the future

It "may" also help with local searches to have local IP's for local languages - but I am unsure about how significant that impact would be.

 

sub-domains is good option, u can create links with country or lang same as google so they will click link to view website in there native lang.

 

Hi,
the nearer (of the root) the better. Of course, when it's possible. I made it with my two sites in my signature. I think, if you have too much pages (thousands and thousands) it'll become too complicated to manage. If you have only 40, 50 pages why not try it ?

 

We design multilingual web sites as part of our business, and in order to answer the question I would need to know which markets, and which language groups, you are targetting.

Different markets will require different approaches; there isn't a single answer to this question unfortunately.

JB

 

I just wanna know if I get incoming link to my subdomain country.mysite.com will this effect PR of my main domain and also count as incoming link on my main domain??

 

Inbound links ONLY directly affect the page they link to.

For the inbound link to benefit your primary root page, then the linked page must itself link to your root page, and then some of the link benefit will pass along the chain.

 

well i would prefer subdomain ..

 

The incoming link won't have much effect on the main domain at all, but unless the link is also from a page containing the same language then it won't help the translated section very much.

Also, bear in mind that when you translate a web site, you are not translating for a 'country' you are translating for a language. For example, you translate into Spanish for the Hispanic regions of the world, including Latin America and 9% of the USA, it is not just about Spain.

JB

 

I'd also suggest you go for subdomains. That will avoid your directory structure from going too deep.

Another option can be to use the same page load content for different languages, by selecting a variable for language, and displaying appropriate contents, according to the language chosen. This can be based on cookie also, but I dont think this is a good idea.

You should have separate pages / URLs for different content.

 

Don't forget as well that Hispanic Spanish is different from Spain's Spanish.

 

Hi Guys

This is exactly what I am currently considering for a website that I manage. Its an international site relevant to UK, Canada and US. The current problem is dealing with the fact that we do not appear in Regional listings (e.g. Google.ca) as we are a .com domain hosted in the UK. It seems the only way to address this (short of setting up completely new domains for each country) is to host a subdomain e.g. canada.ourdomain.com on a Canadian server which then makes it relevant to regional listings (thats if I've thought this through correctly.)

The main concern we have here is that the site already achieves pretty good SE placements for some high traffic terms and by breaking off the content into those subdomains (its all currently in subdirectories like /uk or /canada) the site will lose position because the site will suddenly shrink from around 900 pages to around 300 pages relevant for each country running in each subdomain. Obviously we can't just keep the 900 odd pages in place on the main site as then we would have duplicate content.

Seems though that there is no other way to address this regional listing issue. It will be several steps back to (hopefully(!)) move more steps forward. Unless anyone has any other ideas....?

Joe

 

JoebeeKenobi,

if you move to subdomains and use 301 redirects you wont "loose your 900 pages". All PR will get passed to their new locations. You should effectively maintain all your current rankings.

 

Axe

Cheers for that mate - certainly something to look at. My only question then is, that if G sees subdomains as seperate sites and (if I'm correct from what seems to be our experience) G likes large sites providing its all good unique, growing content, Splitting the pages down into subdomains will surely hurt the rankings of the main site as two thirds of the pages will be redirecting to the new subdomains which G will see as new sites? Or maybe I'm missing something here...

 

If all your internal linking to pages and sub pages etc. remains the same (now pointing to the appropriate subdomains), for the most part things should be good. All your internal PR is getting passed around to pages the same as they were before. And the 301 redirects are taking care of the PR being passed from external links to those pages moved to the subdomain

Any drops in rankings you experience should be overcome in the long terms as those subdomains begin to rank better for other searches (particularly in their new host countries)

After you complete the change over you should do a new round of link building. Many directories that don't accept deep links to internal pages will accept links to a subdomain. And get some links to those internal pages you feel may be at risk to loosing rankings.

Also find regional link sources. Get links from Canadain sites on Canadian ip's to point to your Canada subdomain. And get the subdomain listed in Canadian directories. Do the same for the other country subdomains

 

Cheers for all the info axe... very helpful indeed as we look planning the way ahead with it.

 

An important part of SEO is using the directory structure to represent content. This means that the directory name should imply something on it's content and preferably be very specific. That is why I wouldn't use directories named after languages (such as /spanish) but seperate the site into subdomains (which would also have an SEO impact as they will be treated as seperate sites). Remember that google usually uses only 1-2 levels deep of directory trees as a descriptor of the pages themselves.

I suggest using subdomains such as: spanish.yoursite.com and up to 2 levels deep directories to describe products or offers.