The best SEO practices for multilingual sites

1. International SEO Tips
Roman Dobronovsky,
Head of the SEO Department
Promodo Company
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2. Introduction
 Correct geo-targeting: general notes
 How to choose domain name for multilingual SEO purposes
 Multilingual sections within one domain
 Secondary ranking factors
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3. Geo-Targeting Levels
1. Country
2. City or region (state, county, etc.)
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4. Googleworld
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5. Each country has its own Google
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6. The same language – different sites
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7. Local domain name is half of battle
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8. Case study: InetGiant.com and co.uk
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9. Case study: InetGiant.com and co.uk
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10. Domain for USA-oriented sites
 The majority of site owners ignore .us domain names
 The majority of American sites have .com domain names (e.g., google.com,
amazon.com, ebay.com, groupon.com, etc.)
 You can use any generic top level domain names without localization (e.g.,
.net, .org, etc. vs. fr., co.uk, etc.)
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11. Domain name for SEO in Europe
 There are special generic .eu domains for pan-European sites but usually
search engines prefer rank higher country-code top level domain names
(e.g., .it, .fr, .co.uk, etc.)
 Solution #1: purchase of country-code top level domain name for each
country(.fr, .co.uk, .de и т.д.)
 Solution #2: use of subfolders or subdomains (fr.site.com or site.com/fr/)
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12. Possible solutions for geo-targeting within one domain
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13. Subdomains: pro and contra
Example: http://fr.site.com or http://de.site.com
Pros:
 You can use Google Webmaster Tools to set your site as local
 There are no problems with registration of new domains for each local market
 Subdomains can be placed on different servers
Cons:
 ccTLDs have more chances to get ranked higher
 User potentially has some problems with usability (http://fr.site.com – is “fr”
language or country?)
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14. Subfolders: pro and contra
Example: http://www.site.com/fr/ or http://www.site.com/de/
Pros:
 You can use Google Webmaster Tools to set your site as local
 There are no problems with registration of new domains for each local market
Cons:
 ccTLDs have more chances to get ranked higher
 User potentially has some problems with usability (http://fr.site.com – is “fr” language or
country?)
 The inability to place different language versions on different servers
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15. URL parameters: pro and contra
Example: http://www.site.com?loc=de or http://www.site.com?country=usa
Pros: Any, this variant is the worst
Cons:
 ccTLDs, subdomains and subfolders have more chances to get ranked higher
 There is a problem of duplicate content
 User potentially has some problems with usability
(http://www.site.com?loc=de – is “de” language or country?)
 The inability to set manually a site as local in Google Webmaster Tools
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16. The same content on the different domains: possible solutions
Example: two pages contain the same content – http://www.site.ca/page/ and
http://www.site.fr/page/
Solution #1: 301 redirect
Solutions #2: “Canonical” meta-tag
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17. Secondary ranking factors
 Using Google Webmaster Tools. Con – this does not work for
ccTLDs (.ru, .co.uk, etc.)
 IP
 The language of the site’s pages
 Contacts
 Local backlinks
 Using Google Places
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18. Thank you!
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