Targeting France Best SEO practices

[FishEyeSEO]

I've got a client with a large e-commerce site with a  .com domain and they want to start targeting France. Other than building another site in Frence with a .fr domain, what would be the best course of action?

I know that the obvious option would be to build a separate French site with a .fr domain but is there another more cost effective way?

I tried doing a search for one of their key-phrases using the Google Global app (Google.fr) and they are ranking in pretty much the same position as for Google.co.uk.

Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Wynyard]

I would say that you should first try to do this without building out a .fr domain. In your position, and with some experience of this already under my belt, I would look to build pages relevant to France in a /fr folder, and use Webmaster Tools to inform Google that this is where the geographical target for that folder is.

There are many other things to think about, just a few of them are;

1. Filtering of results by the user will have an impact i.e. the search for sites in French/ search for sites in France choice that users will asked to make. It's great that the site shows up in your tests, but maybe it would disappear to some users if it's not hosted in France?

2. You could still buy an appropriate .fr domain, build out a little relevant content hosted in France, link to this from your obviously reasonably authoritative main site and see if you can start to get the new domain to rank and "fill in the blanks".

3. You don't say if you translated the key phrase you used, and I'm assuming translation would be relevant. If it is, and excuse me if this is obvious, you'll need to do all of your keyword research again. Just translating from say, English probably won't cut the mustard.

I seem to recall there was a Whiteboard Friday on this topic quite recently, you should look that up.

[RobertFisher]

Ahhh, France. The wine, the art, and, uhhh the French...that is the issue. Rand did a WBF on the cc domains and those French with their "French searcher problem."  (They can be so damn....French sometimes)

This advocates using the .cc domain as the best solution in France. However, when cost isan issue you may have to go with what you've got. The advantage of a subdomain or folder is you are likely to get some of the juice of your domain over time.

Rand actually breaks out the advantages and disadvantages of each option quite well and I do not believe my condensing it will help you as much as that short WBF.

To those who would think I was being condescending to the French in the first paragraph, my favorite city in the world is Paris and my fourteen year old son was born there and is a dual citizen. Favorite movie (ok one of my favorites) Paris je t'aime. 
Bon Jour

[SimonCullum]

Hi FishEyeSEO

That makes sense from István.

An example of structuring a website based on International location without a dedicated TLD and separate hosting is Nike, check out:

http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_FR/?ref=

you'll see the  /fr_FR/  which is for France

and  http://www.nike.com/nikeos/p/nike/fr_CA/?change  where /fr_CA/  is also in French, though for French speaking Canadians.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

[Keszi]

Hey,

A cost effective plan would be adding an /fr/ sub-folder and target that folder to France. But if I had one possible way to build up a new website on .fr ccTLD I would go for that.

That is my pick.

I hope it helped,

Istvan