International SEO - Best Practices

Looking for proven experience in language sites.

Can you provide recommendations on which you feel is the best strategy and comment why?

1. Sub-Folder - domain.com/en and domain.com/it/, etc.
2. Sub-Domain - en.domain.com and it.domain.com, etc.
3. ccTLD - domain.com and domain.it, etc.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the options above? Did you use one strategy then switch to find better results with another? Other ideas or experiments?

Thanks!

I personally use sub domains. I got site with three version, French, Italian, English. All on different sub domains. It will help you keep your main domain safe, in case of penalty.

Nut-Nights said:

I personally use sub domains. I got site with three version, French, Italian, English. All on different sub domains. It will help you keep your main domain safe, in case of penalty.

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That's what I'm leaning towards as well. This particular client has the main page domain.com redirect to domain.com/en/ and told them it's not a good idea for the reason you mentioned and others, such as too much dilution.

Also, seems to me that having one sitemap per sub domain is much cleaner also.

Thanks much, curious what others have to say as well.

i do none of that shit, no folders, no subs and no ccTlds.. Guess what?! i still rank. but maybe its cause of my keywords choices or just the dead competition i dunno!

PS: My competition don't use any of those either. haven't read about this, personal experience mate


Edit: you know that got me thinking, maybe it doesn't matter in my case cause nobody else is using those as well?