Greetings I have this little problem.. I'm going to translate my site to several languages, so i would like to have languages on subdomain. So that my site would be de.mysite.com for Germany etc... but there is a small problem because my domain name does not contain the things im going to have there. So i would like to have my content on subdomains like vegetables.mysite.com health.mysite.com etc.. so my question is, how important is it to have your niche keywords in your domain? Would you choose de.mysite.com/vegetables or vegetables.mysite.com/de Please help me, this is very important for me. Thank You
Having keywords in your domain name is important to a certain degree, especially in cases wherein the competition is high or you are dealing in a niche. Evidence prove that you could rank for a keyword just by having them in your domain name, obviously for very low competition keywords. But it does prove a point, keywords in domain name somehow helps you to rank higher. Therefore I see no harm in having it. vegetable.mysite.com/de ur structure seems to be my choice.
Dang, this is what i was fearing. Alright, will go this route, thanks a lot for reply. Is it possible to register .de and other domains if not citizen of germany or the country in question?
Many in the SEO community think that having a SubDomain keyword will give them an advantage but I don't agree. In multilingual web design you have a choice of seperate web sites, SubDomain, or Subdirectories to handle the language sets. We have tried all of them and found many disadvantages to them. First, is a single site can obtain a higher page rank. Ok PR is not that important but... Second, the internal link structure can focus on PR back to the single home page. All inbound links can go to the single home page entry point no matter what language. In competitive SEO more links win. As you get into multilingual SEO, the onpage SEO elements must match the selected language, character set and spelling. And the editing of this must be free form editing. I am very good at English, but not Spanish, French, etc. This requires someone else and usually in a different country. Therefore wide area editing of content, On-Page SEO elements, etc. And they have the correct desk top setting for QA checking the work. In short, what you are worring about is not important. Links, traffic and good On-Page multilingual will do. It is better to have one site, with different categories, sub categories and product details working first. Then translate the tree of pages into the next language. Then link the two at the home page level via a Language List Box, Flag menu, etc. Just be careful about interlinking between language trees. Or consider them seperate sites that are linked together at the home page. Hope this helps...
Personally I would leave them as sub-directories of your main domain, otherwise you might jeopardize your SEO efforts if you link subdomains together too aggressively.