Is having my homepage on a subfolder harmful?

[NielsDE]

Hi guys,

I am the webmaster of the following two websites:

www.gpblog.com/nl
www.gpblog.com/en

The first URL is the Dutch version of GPBlog, the second URL is the UK version of GPblog. Whenever a person visits www.gpblog.com he gets redirected to either the Dutch version or the UK version based on his location.

My question is: is it harmful to have 1. your homepage on a subfolder and 2. is it harmful to run two different languages on one domain using this technique?

Thank you in advance!

[jasongmcmahon]

Personally, I don't see why the folder structure would negatively affect your SEO. I recommend that you use the   tag to cleanly denote what is in English & whats in Dutch.

[ClaytonJ]

Hi

It may not impact - but am not a fan of that structure, it could get complicated easy for google and for scaling.

Would recommend:-

www.gpblog.com/en-nl/

www.gpblog.com/nl-nl/

www.gpblog.com/en-uk/

Check out https://www.disneylandparis.com/nl-nl/ etc.  hopelessly slow...

Regards

[effectdigital]

I tend to use the base domain as the site's 'home' language (e.g: if the blog was first conceived in the UK and the authors live in the UK, then I'd use "/" as en-GB). I only create sub-folders for the 'additional' languages (e.g: "/nl", "/de", "/fr" etc)

Even 301 redirects can dilute SEO authority a little (or a lot, under the wrong circumstances). Since lots of webmasters and editors will just 'lazy-link' to the base domain (or because it makes the link look cleaner / more legit within their content) I'd have your primary language deployment at the base domain, then all the rest in sub-folders

This is my go-to approach and to be honest it's never failed me yet