Comments on: International SEO Strategies

By: Keith Horwood

Keith Horwood — Thu, 19 May 2011 08:52:41 +0000

There are lots of benefits of hosting a site on the same domain, especially with link building, as domain authority can be passed to your country specific areas of the site.

Ideally, I do not like to choose a country in a drop down menu, and I think this is true of most users. For SEO prefer to separate by domain suffix, if you own all of the relevant domains. This is especially true with online stores, as I think this is the least confusing option for users, and gives greater site felxibility, as long as you can maintain the unique content of each site.

By: Photo Recovery

Photo Recovery — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:35:56 +0000

This is really really important if you want to truly be international online but it´s fiendishly difficult to get a balance of inbound language local links.

By: Paul Gailey

Paul Gailey — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:14:48 +0000

“link building strategy with in-country links” : this is really really important if you want to truly be international online but it´s fiendishly difficult to get a balance of inbound language local links – which is why your content across languages may not necessarily be effective as a mere translation as the content will have varying appeal to your linking audience.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:27:52 +0000

@David, that wouldn’t help SEO unless the text appeared on the site and in the code, which is difficult when you’re dealing with several languages.

By: David

David — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:28:03 +0000

Would it be a good idea to have a video with closed captioning available in several languages?

By: John Hyde

John Hyde — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:46:50 +0000

It’s vital to have natives of the country involved in any translation. It’s not just bare language – it’s idioms and metaphors as well.

If your New Zealand office has a stoosh – is this good or bad?
Do your Australian male employees wear thongs?
Is weight measured in pounds or kilos in the UK?

Answers: Bad, Yes (on their feet), Both.

By: Ani Lopez

Ani Lopez — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:37:05 +0000

“Sub-domains are better than sub-folders, which should be your last option”
Nothing is black and white in SEO, the solution must be evaluated and tested before. How many of those people recommending subdomains have tried subdirectories to compare?

I’ve tested subdirectories after having subdomains and it worked better.

Common situations:
• one country, several languages
• one language, several countries

Best option (I agree) domains by country
• mycompany.com US
• mycompany.fr France
• mycompany.de Germany

but it is the most expensive:
• technical resurces required
• complicated to manage and coordinate
• one CMS for all or one per domain?

Second option directories by country/language
• mycompany.com US
• mycompany.com/fr/ France
• mycompany.com/de/ Germany

One language, several countries
• mycompany.com/es/ Spain
• mycompany.com/es-ar/ Argentina
• mycompany.com/es-mx/ Mexico

directories vs subdomains

Directories by country/language
• cheaper: less technical resources required
• simple to manage and coordinate
• directories contribute to increase the general relevancy of domain and inherit its relevancy

Follow ISO 639-1 two letter codes
• OK /es/
• KO /spa/ /spain/

Worst option subdomains by country
• Search Engines consider subdomains almost a completely different entity than their domain
• they don’t inherit most of the domain’s relevancy
• contribute poorly to increase the domain’s relevancy

Some data helping demonstrate this here: http://www.slideshare.net/anilopez/seo-for-multilanguage-international-projects

By: Vipul

Vipul — Mon, 24 May 2010 15:33:26 +0000

I have a doubt on duplicate content issue. Say i have mydomain.com and mydomain.in (India) with exactly same pages mydomain.com/customer-help and mydomain.in/customer-help
1. will search engine treats them as duplicate content
2. will Indian page will perform better in India for the same set of keywords.