[thelist] Multi-lingual site

John Allsopp john at johnallsopp.co.uk
Wed Mar 30 14:56:06 CDT 2011


> Hi all - I'm producing a multilingual site and we (client and I) are
> wondering about the effects on SEO of our site configuration
> 2.	Each site in its its own domain (xxx.com, xxx.es, ..) but using the
> English site for images, css etc.

Off the top of my head (ie. without researching it), I'm opting for 2. It
forces you to buy the domains, but they don't point to duplicate content.
Localisation is increasingly important and Google likes to know where you
are, so a country domain is one big obvious clue.

Seems to be no point in duplicating the CSSs although perhaps (I don't
know) you might need to vary the CSS for things like German (text is
longer) or Arabic (text is right to left) so perhaps a main CSS with a
language variant CSS too?

I guess the downside is that your main .com/index doesn't ultimately and
naturally have everything pointing to it but a quick link on all the
language homepages fixes that if you want it (I don't think you do,
really).

This question is linked, isn't it, to how you are serving the languages?
If you're taking the browser preferences, how will you redirect to the
language page if the user arrives on the wrong one? Not sure if there's
anything difficult here, but it's part of the mix.

My 2p worth .. I'm very interested in this, but I can't say I'm expert in
internationalisation.

J


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