Multilingual Website. Best SEO Strategy

[teconsite.com]

Hello.
We have a client that will extend his business to severak countries in Europe.
So far its main market was the Spanish one. In this market it works with his own domain that is the same that its brand name. The domain does not contain any important keyword but it has been working for 11 years: www.efutgol.com. In Spain has a good ranking. It ranks number 1 or number 2, it fluctuates.

But it also sells to France and Portugal. In the France market  they used a domain with exact match with the French keyword that they are interested in: www.equipementsfootball.com/. The same strategy  www.equipamentosfutebol.com in Portugal. Both have number 1 for the main keyword in those Countries for that keyword

Now they are going to sell in more countries.
The problem is that each website have a different CMS what makes necessary double maintenance.

We are going to unificate in only one domain, one single design, one single CMS all websites. But were have doubts about SEO consequences of doing that

What is the best thing for URLs?
www.efutgol.com/fr/ .....
www.efutgol.com/es/
www.efutgol.com / pt

What should we do with the domains that are so well positioned in france and portugal? 301 redirect will work? What should we expect? What would you do?

What things we should consider to keep the current position?

[RyanKent]

I would recommend the following:

• as you suggested, use www.efutgol.com/fr/ style of URLs for each language. It is preferable to subdomains

• 301 redirect each existing site's home page to the new home page for the given language on the efutgol.com site

• offer flags at the top of each page representing each language. At times some customers will see your site in a language they do not understand. It is very important they have a quick and obvious way to adjust the language to meet their needs.

• customize your languages for each country. While many countries may share a language, their dialects vary enough to require their own pages. A spanish page optimized for Spain will read differently then a spanish page designed for Mexican readers.

• once the move has been completed 100% and tested, create a campaign for your French and Portugal markets. Carefully track your current ranking information and follow any changes.

• Create some buzz about this change. Put a positive spin on it (i.e. "to serve you better...") and contact those who have links to your existing French and Portuguese sites and see if they would be willing to update the links to your new site. Either way, you should focus on obtaining new links which are local for those respective countries.

• map over as many individual pages as possible. Depending on your system, this can be a lot of work. It is worth it for the best user experience and your rankings. Don't just dump users on your new home page and expect them to find items.

Good luck.

[teconsite.com]

Thanks so much for your complete and usefull language.

I wonder if it would be better a 301 redirect from equipamentsfootball.com to www.efutgol.com/fr

why you consider we should redirect to the homepage instead of the folder of the specific language?

Is it important a redirection from homepage to homepage?

Thanks again.

[RyanKent]

Why you consider we should redirect to the homepage instead of the folder of the specific language?

"301 redirect each existing site's home page to the new home page for the given language on the efutgol.com site"

To clarify, if equipamentsfootball.com is your current French homepage, and www.efutgol.com/fr is the new French homepage, then I am suggesting you 301 from equipamentsfootball.com to the /fr page.

In all instances you want to make this change as smooth and seamless as possible for users. This process also has the benefit of retaining the maximum amount of your current link value.