I have let's say mysite.com and I translated it into Hebrew and Russian languages, so the question is would it be better to create separate domains for each language or to place translated site in subfolder of existing domain: mysite.com/ru/ , mysite.com/he/ What is better to do SEO-wise or otherwise and why? Thanks for your help Vadim
Separate them by folders so you can focus your marketing efforts on your main site. If you make another domain, then you're starting from the beginning all over again for each language. Make sure you separate your site into three. yoursite.com, yoursite.com/ru/, yoursite.com/he/. Validate those three individually into Webmasters, etc. Create separate sitemaps/robots and target each to their respective country.
That's exactly what I did but Google and other search engines seems to be reluctant to index these new subfolders. So my friend said that Google will put more weight on main domains than on subfolders like yoursite.com/ru/ He said it is better to make yoursite.ru instead of yoursite.com/ru/ Is it true?
When you target a site regional wise, it is good to create a new domain like yoursomain.co.uk, yoursomain.fr, ... to make your site more seo friendly. If you create a sub folders, it helps you to the visitors who visits your site. But, it is very hard to get into the specified region that your language targets. So, go for individual translated domains. It helps a lot in seo, no doubt. All the best...