SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es

[vanvallejo]

Hi All,

I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages.

The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English.  The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers.

I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's.  Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ?   As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins?

My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)?

If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,

vantresca

[KaneJamison]

Google Webmaster Blog posted this recently: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

They don't explicitly say that doing this will result in 'geo-targeting,' but if a site is presented as the "version for users in Mexico, in Spanish", you can bet that Google will likely be showing that content to Google.com.mx searches.

[vanvallejo]

Thanks very much for this Kane!

This article is very helpful as I do think geo targeting can be limiting for languages like French that aren't restricted to a single geographic region.

In terms of the campaign set up within SEO moz, is there any point in tracking sub folders separately?  I am considering geographic targeting for the russian language version (.com/ru) and it probably makes sense to track this separately for visibility on Yandex, right?   What do you think?

[KaneJamison]

Sorry, I can't help much re: multiple languages and how you should be tracking. I would probably track each subfolder as a separate campaign, but I'm going to defer to someone else's opinion on this question, since I don't deal with multi-language sites.

[INXCO]

Hi Kane

We're a Belgian marketing and communicationagency and we're using SEOmoz for multi-language sites. We've got the same question as vantresca.

We'd like to run a campaign for www.masser.be. This site exists both in Dutch (NL) and French (FR). We were also thinking to run seperate campaigns. One for www.masser.be/nl and one for www.masser.be/fr.

Since you were going to defer someone else's opinion in this multi-language questions, we were wondering if you did so already?

Kind regards and thanks already.

Kim

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Vantresca.

I think it is better to clear thing about how International SEO works.

First of all I see a contradiction between your question (when you talk about geo targeting folders or better using cTld), then in this answer here above, when you talk about languages.

Remember: to target a country is not the same as targeting a language speaking population. The example you give (French) is quite clear about this difference.

That means that if you are targeting a language and the people talking that language, the first thing you must discard is the use of an Country level domain name, because that would mean you are targeting the country of the cTld (.es.> Spain - .fr = France...).

But that mean also that you should not have to indicate to Google to geo target any subfolder for any particular country. Ideally every language folder of the site should have to be crawled and shown globally, in order to be found by all the people speaking those language (i.e.: French, Canadians of Quebec, but also all the African nation speaking French..

More over, you cannot use any classic geo targeting signal, as currency, addresses or else.

And, also, you should pay attention to the version of the language used, as - for instance - the french spoken in Quebec is really different from the one spoken in Paris. In that case you should use the most "standardized" version of french, a neutral french.

So... if your site has French, Spanish,  English (or Russian I'll talk later), and you want those languages ranks well in every possible country those languages are spoken, the only tactic you have to use is link building, creating as much campaigns as the languages are and not thinking in outreaching sites from France, again taking French as an example, but from sites of every country were French is an official language.

About Russian, my suggestion is to prioritize the migration to an .ru domain if you think to compete in Yandex, as Yandex give a clear preference to Russian country level domains.

Related to your question about if it is possible to create a campaign on a subfolder level, honestly I cannot answer that question, as I've never had that need. But I would address the helpteam regarding this doubt, because they can tell you in details if Roger-bot will crawl your data (as you have requested) or not. You can contact them at help@seomoz.org

[vanvallejo]

Hi Gianluca,

Thanks very much for the helpful response.  I agree with your recommendation, linking building across authoritative sites for each of the languages targeted is probably the best way to approach this.

Interestingly, Google Analytics indicates that the vast majority of French (language) visitors are indeed from France, with less than 6% coming from other french speaking countries, so I think it makes sense to register a country top level domain in future to ensure the best chance at competitive visibility here (and in the UK, US).

What you've written about Yandex is very interesting.  I myself am new to global SEO so will be doing research.  I will also email seomoz to see exactly how best to handle the subfolders.

Thanks again!