Link vs Subdomain Language redirect

[nunob.staredition]

Hi all,

I'm managing a website that uses a redirect to show different languages to the users. I mean when a user access the site from any country it sees the full domain but when it access it from Italy, France or Germany it goes to domain.com/lang=FR or IT.

I see that other sites use a technique to redirect to it.domain.com or fr.domain.com but I have doubts about which one is better.

We do an aggressive link building strategy and we have a lot of links to the root domain across the various languages. Is it better to do the link building to the it.domain.com and fr.domain.com, depending on the language source of the link instead of the root?

I'm seeing that some of our competitors are doing this but I'm afraid is going to spread the link juice across many subdomains and lose power to the root.

Thanks in advance

[katemorris]

Subdomains would be a hard path, totally possible, but really tough. You need time and resources to dedicate to each subdomain to build the content (if geo-targeting, more time and resources would be needed to change and focus the content). I would suggest parameters, but that's just my 2 cents. Good luck!!

[nunob.staredition]

Hi Kate,

Sorry for the late reply.
I appreciate your answer and I recognize that we might not be doing the best separation of the users, and that's why we need to know what is the best solution.

According to your Guide, we should be using Translate/HREFLANG, however I see that all the competition is doing the subdomain trick, in order to get more relevance on every specific markets.

My question still remains if we should go to a subdomain strategy (correctly redirected) or we keep the translation parameters in the URL, sending every user to the root.com/lang=IT, for ex.

Thanks

[katemorris]

First of all, I don't think what you are doing is best for the user. Setting language based on IP address is assuming things that are not always true. Rather than setting language based on IP, try detecting language preference from the browser. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8199760/how-to-get-the-browser-language-using-java-script

I would suggest checking out this guide to international strategy to determine if you need to just target language or country.

If you do end up just translating, I prefer using subfolders or parameters, not subdomains. And don't use a ccTLD like .fr or .de. Those are for geo-targeting only and require you to distinguish your content based on what country you are targeting.