Hello, I have read Google guidelines regarding international SEO domain setup. What they recommend is one of the following options: a) country specific domains - domain.en | domain.de b) subdomains, aka en.domain.com | de.domain.com c) folders, aka domain.com/de | domain.com/en d) url parameters, aka site.com?loc=en | site.com?loc=de My question is - are there any other options, which WOULD NOT change the way the URL looks like? We have a website which is aimed at people from various countries. What we want to achieve is: 1) someone searches for phrase in google 2) he sees indexed LOCAL version of the site, which is based on his browser data (for example, en-en.domain.com) 3) he clicks and is redirected to the main domain - domain.com BUT content of the website is still in English (in this example) 4) When he chooses to change language of the site in site settings, URL REMAINS THE SAME - domain.com, BUT language changes to whichever he chose. Is it possible to achieve so that it does not hurt SEO rankings? Facebook does similar things, but from what I have heard from SEO specialists - "FB doesn't need to worry about SEO, they have a deal with Google" Simply put - are there any other options when it comes to international SEO apart from those listed above, which would allow URL to stay the same even when changing language of website? I will be grateful for your answers - if you worked on international projects and know about this stuff, I am willing to pay for consultations if needed. Best, Robert
I have one additional question - is it possible to display different metatags for single URL (title, description - basically what user sees in SERP) based on user's language settings in Google? If so, how can it be done and does it influence rankings in a negative way? Best, Robert