SEO Best Practice with Multi-Language Sites

[MPJHorner]

I manage some large ecommerce sites which has many domains .co.uk, .com, .fr, .es, .it - etc etc
They are also translate and targeted specifically at the expected country.

Some say .de pages however turn up on .co.uk google search.

I was hoping we could compile a list of the best ways to works with international sites from a SEO perspective.

All help much appreciated, i will update this post with the good info to create a list.

 

[pipi13]

I'm also very interested in this. I feel like there is hardly any useful information about foreign SEO out there.

 

[MPJHorner]

I have already implement alternative pages with this https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

 

[pipi13]

I specified my target country in google WMT but I'm also considering hreflang

 

[danbarqami]

Great, I am also interested on this. Are the language specific content on subdomains or subdirectories? This is crucial for effective approach to the issue. Google treat subdomain as entirely different sites.

 

[MPJHorner]

I specified my target country in google WMT but I'm also considering hreflang

Yes, this is something we already. hreflang is on my to do list. (Hopefully going to get benefits here as Google list it!)

Great, I am also interested on this. Are the language specific content on subdomains or subdirectories? This is crucial for effective approach to the issue. Google treat subdomain as entirely different sites.

We use different domains, much cleaner.

 

[Stufferizer]

I believe it's quite simple:

1. correct html lang
2. correct hreflang if you interlink other sites
3. (most importantly) country specific domains

Multi-Language sites don't work, period. Why would amazon have different domains if the .com would rank in any country just with different languages?