International URL Structures

[sarahcoutu15]

Hi everyone!

I've read a bunch of articles on the topic, but I can't seem to be able to figure out a solution that works for the specific case. We are creating a site for a service agency, this agency has offices around the world - the site has a global version (in English/French & Spanish) and some country specific versions. Here is where it gets tricky: in some countries, each office has a different version of the site and since we have Canada for example we have a French and an English version of the site. For cost and maintenance reason, we want to have a single domain : www.example.com

We want to be able to indicate via Search Console that each subdomain is attached to a different country, but how should we go about it.

I've seen some examples with subfolders like this:

Global FR : www.example.com/fr-GL

Canada FR: www.example.com/fr-ca

France: www.example.com/fr-fr

Does this work? It seems to make more sense to use : **Subdirectories with gTLDs, **but I'm not sure how that would work to indicate the difference between my French Global version vs. France site.

Global FR : www.example.com/fr

France : www.example.com/fr/fr

Am I going about this the right way, I feel the more I dig into the issue, the less it seems there is a good solution available to indicate to Google which version of my site is geo-targeted to each country.

Thanks in advance!

[katemorris]

You have the instance that is the reason I took a liking to international SEO. In your instance, because of the annoyances of commonly used languages that are also countries ... I suggest ccTLDs or subdomains.

• Subdomains - You will have to claim each subdomain in Search Console and target them to their specific countries and then use hreflang between the languages within the country subsites.

• www.domain.com (main)

• www.domain.com/fr (french)

• www.domain.com/es (spanish)

• ca.domain.com/en (Canadian, english)

• ca.domain.com/fr (Canadian, french)

• fr.domain.com (France)

• ccTLDs - This does the geo-targeting for you. You will need to put the hreflang between the languages within the country sites.

• www.domain.com (main)

• www.domain.com/fr (french)

• www.domain.com/es (spanish)

• www.domain.ca/en (Canadian, english)

• www.domain.ca/fr  (Canadian, french)

• www.domain.fr (France)

It does not matter which you use. But if you wanted to use the same root domain, the subdomains are a good way to go about that!