Forum Moderators: open
Is it advantageous to have different languages links on same domain with different folders for each language or for each lang. separate domain name? ex. for english www.a.com and for UK www.a.com.uk and for french www.a.com.fr etc
Thanx in advance for your help.
Regards,
Savvy
[webmasterworld.com...]
Quote from the Moderator, rencke, in his first post there:
The little site in my case story does not have separate urls for the language versions. Not a recommended solution, but enough in this case.
1. Local domains with keyword in name, e.g. something.co.uk, irgendwas.de, quelquechose.fr etc.
2. Dot-coms with keyword in name, e.g. something.com, irgendwas.com, quelquechose.com etc.
3. Everything in same site with keyword in page name, mysite.com/something.htm, mysite.com/irgendwas.htm, mysite.com/quelquechose.htm etc.
4. Sticking the translated pages into subdirectories for each language with names in English, e.g. mysite.com/english/index.htm, mysite.com/deutsch/index.htm, mysite.com/francais/index.htm etc.
1) is pricey and requires legal presence in many countries such as France. 2) is the most cost effective. 3) is the best of the inexpensive solutions for small budgets. 4) is the inexpensive and classical solution that the Europeans use themselves, and it did work well in the case story starting the thread that Marcia linked to.
An additional plus with number 2: You can cross-link all pages to get more inbound links, e.g. "This page in English", "Diese Seite auf Deutsch", "Cette page en français" etc. A very user-friendly approach, since search engines might easily direct people to a page in a language other than the one preferred by the visitor. Normally, most people just put the language choices on the top page, forgetting that a lot of visitors will enter from the side.
