Subdomain or category folder for multi-national site?

Question regarding website with Cantonese and English versions of the same

[smeatz]

I have a client who has a large online jewellery site targeting both English speaking customers as well as Cantonese speaking ones.

Currently, he just has an option in the header and footer that enables a person to switch from the English version to the Cantonese version.

The site is currently undergoing a major revamp and although this has only just begun I can't help but think that a much better way to address the multi-nationality aspect of the site would be to set up either of the following structures:

1) CN.www.example.co.nz/CN/{folder structure}

2) www.example.co.nz/CN/{folder structure}

However, as I also realize many of you guys and gals are way more experienced at "best practice" domain / url structure than THIS guy (I am just a poor SEO guy...lol), I would love to get your input as to what YOU think would be the best option.

Thanks in advance :)

[edited by: bill at 8:33 am (utc) on Feb 10, 2015]
[edit reason] Use example.com [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, smeatz!


first you should distinguish between language targeting and location targeting.
CN is the country code for China.
the language code for cantonese is zh-yue.
if you ever want to host the cantonese content separately from the english content, perhaps locally to your cantonese-speaking visitors, i would suggest using subdomains.
however, your suggested CN.www.example.co.nz/CN/ structure is redundant - i would suggest CN.www.example.co.nz/ instead.
this also makes it possible to have similar url structures on the english and cantonese sites if necessary.

[smeatz]

Thanks for the welcome, phranque!

Really appreciate your response to my post. To possibly help you further clarify the best option (re the URL structure), let me give you a little more background to the website in question:

It is the online arm of a nationwide chain of jewelry stores in New zealand (and soon to be in Australia).

New Zealand has a very large (and ever-growing) Chinese community of which a significant percentage have demonstrated a liking for the widgets offered on this site.

So, in answer to one of the comments you made: "Yes, the local NZ-domiciled Chinese community is the target of the Chinese version".

Incidentally, what is the language code for Mandarin? (if you happen to know it).

Now, as far as the ideal URL format is concerned, on the basis of what I have just shared with you, would you still suggest a subdomain structure for each site as follows:

1) www.example.co.nz (for the English version)

and...

2) CN.www.example.co.nz (for the cantonese version)

Just asking (mainly out of naivety on my part), if zh-yue is the language code for a Cantonese targeted at Cantonese living in New Zealand, wouldn't the better URL structure be:

zh-yue.www.example.co.nz

Or would CN.www.example.co.nz still work just fine? Thinking from an SEO perspective as well as everything else.

The more I type these URLs in here the more I realize that up until recently, I have always associated subdomains WITHOUT the "www" for some reason e.g. CN.example.co.nz Until the web designer (that works on behalf of this client) actually talked about a subdomain WITH the www included, I didn't even know you could do that!

In closing, once again phranque, thanks for your wisdom and advice... and if you can clarify this further (based on what I have just posted here) that would be awesome and much appreciated :)

[edited by: bill at 4:50 am (utc) on Feb 11, 2015]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[Nutterum]

As a webmaster dealing with multi-language purely organic website, I am all in favor of the directory approach. As with everything there are pros and cons:

When to use subdirectories :

Organization – Subdirectories are great for organizing content into meaningful, descriptive URLs. If you're looking to grow your site and categorize content in a meaninful, logical way then subdirectories are a good way to make your URL path’s more search friendly.

For relatively smaller sites, keeping your content in one place will help your site to build initial authority vs spreading too thin with sub domains. Keep in mind that having content spread out across multiple sub domains won’t help with any one site’s authority/trust.

Building dominance in one place over time – The more authority and trust a site builds with the search engines the easier it becomes to rank new content for related keyword terms that would have taken you much longer had you started from scratch. New content can be organized by subfolders.
Easier to manage – Using sub directories can be easier to manage than sub domains for the less technically savvy.

When to use Subdomains :

Different content - self explanatory

Different competition - again self explanatory. If you are looking to snipe your competition with more than just content but keywords etc. , subdomain is the way to go.

Target different regional markets more effectively. Sub domains are easier to market to specific geographical regions: you can assign an IP address to a sub domain and even set a geographical preference in Google’s webmaster tools for each sub domain - something not mentioned often but at the same time VERY important for your organic SERP ranking.

As a side note : Branching out using existing brand strength. If you already have a well established domain and want to expand out into other areas not completely related to your main site’s topics then a sub domain might be a good option.

Hope this helps.

[smeatz]

Nutterum, thanks for your most informative reply. Very helpful stuff with respect to some other jobs I am working on.

However, I don't feel anymore enlightened regarding the specifics of my initial post. Could you (if you get a moment) please have another look at what I actually wrote in the two earlier posts and then, on that basis (and utilizing your own views on how best to format the URLs of multi-language sites as I described my client site to be), post some SPECIFIC EXAMPLES of just how my client site's URL structure might look if it were to be restructured along the lines you suggested?

If you actually take a quick look at the website itself you'll see that currently the only way that Chinese site visitors can access their version of the site, is by way of a header and footer link written in Cantonese.

All I am trying to achieve here is to get some clarification on how best to structure the site (from both an SEO and a usability perspective) on the basis that it attracts large numbers of English-speaking and Chinese-speaking website traffic.

Look forward to your (or anyone else's) thoughts :)

[edited by: smeatz at 3:02 pm (utc) on Feb 10, 2015]

[Nutterum]

Hi Smeatz,

I am sorry about the more general nature of my post, however it is relevant to your case. Though taking a further look subdomain is the way to go.

Two reasons :
1) your domain is local domain. If it was .com it would not have been a problem but its not.
2) in Webmaster tools you can assign the cn.exmaple.co.nz to be geographically related to China and thus rank better there for the Chinese content (be mindful that in China the regulations are quite different and you need to check your content whether you violate them. Match content against blacklisted keywords etc. etc.)
3) If your Chinese visitors are landing on the website only or mainly via e-mail and other campaigns and you are not interested in organic traffic as much then subdirectory structure is more than fine

Hope that helps.