What is the Best Way to Translate a Website?

[sbrault74]

What is the best way?

• Using a different domain
• Using a subdomain of the main site
• Using a folder of the main site

What's your take?

[dotfly]

The perfect thing (from the point of view of a SEO!) is to use the right domain. E.g. french content using .fr, english content using .com / .co.uk / .co and so on

This is no must have but the perfect match... our company has made good experiences with that BUT also with using "only" specified folders for each country.

The aim should be to keep your url structure as short and clear as possible - Google likes that. Using different domains in that case helps a lot but its only one ranking factor within a huge bundle... if you can afford it I would recommend the perfect solution but dont mind if you cant or dont want to...

Sorry, no experiences with subdomains so far...

[gfiorelli1]

The right question should be:

what solution is the best one for my business when it comes to International SEO.

For instance, if you are already present in the country, or if you analytics is saying to you that there is a consistent and persistent traffic from a country, then it could be a great idea creating a localized site using a ccTld.

If now, a subfolder can be enough... but, then, I would try testing the real response of those markets with specific landing pages.

Subdomain would be my third option, but - in the case of site with very complex architectures, they can be a great option, because replicating the IA of a news site (for instance) in a subfolder can be a sort of suicide.