Starting a Multi-Language website, what's the best approach?

taouil

taouil

Junior Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2012
Messages
139
Reaction score
18
Hello,

We are starting a local news website (niche),
we will be building the website on WordPress and WPML plugin,
The website is going to be in 2 languages,
and we want to know what's better for SEO in term of permalinks:

https://website.com -> For Main Language
https://es.website.com -> For 2nd Language

OR

https://website.com -> For Main Language
https://website.com/es -> For 2nd Language

We're going to publish 20+ articles per day, each article is going to in 2 languages,
Are there any advice to things we should implement that can help out rank the same article in 2 different languages?

Thank you.
 
Advertise on BHW
the second choice is better in terms of SEO,
WPML plugin should do most of the work and set the appropriate tags
 
https://website.com/es would be better instead of using a subdomain.

You would also want to use hreflang tags.

You would not want to machine translate titles, descriptions, H1 and H2s. You would want to do kw research and hand translate these elements.
 
Just plug in google translate for example check out lovelatinwomen.com has it in their header works easy enough
 
As other said, go for the second option.
The reason? if you create a subdomain, you'll basically have 2 domains and thus need to do offpage seo for 2 sites whereas with option 2, both languages will benefit from the authority of your domain.
 
The subsequent option is better as far as SEO,

WPML module ought to do the majority of the work and set the proper labels
 
Second option is better. I have seen a lot of multi language sites and I have to say that all of them used second method.
You can separate SEO for them as for 2 different projects and use different platforms based on language difference for back link building.
 
Thank you guys for the inputs,
So the second option is better,
Is there any advice's I should implement?
 
I am going against all the above comments.

If you are serving two different geographical regions, it would make total sense to have the main sub-domain, website.com as a landing page where you showcase the two languages you are creating, English and Spanish.
From this page, you take them en.website.com and es.website.com

Both these language sites are going to have different hierarchies and serve very different sets of visitors with different behaviors (culturally as well).

Look at Google, they have support.google.com and not google.com/support because their support is so extensive and they have so many products. This leads to complex hierarchy which they don't want to mess with their main sub-domain, google.com, their search engine by putting support as a sub-directory.

Look at craigslist. For different geo-locations, they have orangecountry.craigslist.org and napavalley.craigslist.org

We can all have opinions. But you know best what makes sense to your business. In future, if you are creating a German site on de.website.com, an elegant solution is de.website.com with its own web structure and hierarchy.

Best thing you can do, is google for the term "sub-domain vs sub-directory" and read through the top 10 sites and make your decision. Do not go by what we are saying as we don't know your business intentions and what you want to do in future. Good luck!!!
 
bbmaid said:
I am going against all the above comments.

If you are serving two different geographical regions, it would make total sense to have the main sub-domain, website.com as a landing page where you showcase the two languages you are creating, English and Spanish.
From this page, you take them en.website.com and es.website.com

Both these language sites are going to have different hierarchies and serve very different sets of visitors with different behaviors (culturally as well).

Look at Google, they have support.google.com and not google.com/support because their support is so extensive and they have so many products. This leads to complex hierarchy which they don't want to mess with their main sub-domain, google.com, their search engine by putting support as a sub-directory.

Look at craigslist. For different geo-locations, they have orangecountry.craigslist.org and napavalley.craigslist.org

We can all have opinions. But you know best what makes sense to your business. In future, if you are creating a German site on de.website.com, an elegant solution is de.website.com with its own web structure and hierarchy.

Best thing you can do, is google for the term "sub-domain vs sub-directory" and read through the top 10 sites and make your decision. Do not go by what we are saying as we don't know your business intentions and what you want to do in future. Good luck!!!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply,
I totally agree with you if you serve a different purpose,
The website is going to be a news website,
Each article is the same only in different language.
 
In that case, still think about the different languages. You are not going to build spanish language backlinks to your english news site. So having an English language site on the main sub-domain website.com and a spanish site on websote.com/es will lead to complications in future, when the users linking back won't look for a sub-directory. They will end up linking to website.com That will look really strange to Google.

If you have your main sub-domain website.com routing users to different language sites, even links to website.com can flow to both es.website.com and en.website.com
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top