Two languages = two websites?

Hi guys,

I am just starting a new affiliate project and in a first step I would like to target the US and the French market. What would you recommend from a SEO perspective: Having one multilingual website (probably with a .com domain) or two separate websites for the two markets? The name of the project should be the same in both countries.

In my opinion, I would go with 2 different websites. One with a .com extension, and the other a .fr extension to target geographically (France). But if you're targeting the French market globally, then a .com, of course.

Also, if you're unlucky enough to get your website penalized by Google, at least it is only 1 website that will get affected. So yeah, go with two, just in case.

I'll do the same thing @Sophie did up there. I think it's the best choice. Good luck

Ok - thank you!

Not necessary. You can do like yourdomain.com for US and yourdomain.com/fr for french.

Risky to have two websites. Google might consider it a duplicate. Not versed as to how Google handles this but never in my life have I seen a two-languaged website be setup like this.

Work with 1 domain. Don't spread your SEO work between two. And then split your language up into two subdomains or paths. fr.domain.com / en.domain.com or www.domain.com/fr/,www.domain.com/en/

No need to make the off-page SEO work twice as hard and risk having Google devalue you for having two identical websites (if that is possible to happen).

Primarily though your off-page SEO works becomes mutually beneficial and building to fr strengthens the domain making en benefit as well. Objectively better and the strategy most use as far as I've seen so far.

Do you really think Google could consider it a duplicate although the language is different?

In general I agree with having just one domain, the only thing is that I think French people trust a .fr website more. As I plan to add a shop with my own products later, that could be relevant.

I have an Italian amazon affiliate blog and I translated it in german and french.

They're on different domain, because the first one (the italian) has it TLD and the name is italian (so I could not make all on the same domain)

Now I have a it for italian, .com for german and fr for French.

There is no difference.

TurboCharge said:

Risky to have two websites. Google might consider it a duplicate. Not versed as to how Google handles this but never in my life have I seen a two-languaged website be setup like this.

Work with 1 domain. Don't spread your SEO work between two. And then split your language up into two subdomains or paths.

No need to make the off-page SEO work twice as hard and risk having Google devalue you for having two identical websites (if that is possible to happen).

Primarily though your off-page SEO works becomes mutually beneficial and building to fr strengthens the domain making en benefit as well. Objectively better and the strategy most use as far as I've seen so far.

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You solve that by insert Hreflang tags in all your sites. But google understand it even without them.

I inserted them after months but I had no penalty. Maybe because the 3 sites are on the same IP