Website Target in Europe

[Stevejobs2011]

Hi, I am planning a site to target in Europe and I expect to translate my site into ten different languages namely English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish.

I am doing some study of this case in targeting different countries for SEO, most of the advise are the following:

a.  Build 10 different websites and target different geographical location in Google Webmaster

b.  Get 10 different country specific domains for 10 different websites

I would like to hear any suggestion if there is anything better than this ? I had all the materials and translation ready but building 10 different websites or getting 10 different domains are very time consuming and costly.

I would be appreciated if any one had any advise for me to make the website more management friendly.

Thank you.

Tom

[MassivePrime]

I really think the biggest factor is whether all the content is going to be exactly the same but translated in dif. languages or you are creating a product or service that spans 10 different countries.

For example; if you are creating a site about how to stop smoking or about the same products and you translate that to 10 different languages then I suggest using Ryan's approach.

If however you are creating something country specific, like a directory for businesses in each specific country then I would simply run with 10 domains (if you're lucky enough to find the same name with each ccTLD for the countries you're targeting)

I'm guessing that if you are willing to make the effort to redo the content in so many languages then the financial payout should warrant spending the money to buy 10 domains + hosting etc.

If you specified the topic of your site someone who's already done it might offer better advice, hope this helps

[RyanKent]

If you were to ask for the best possible SEO performance without consideration to other factors, then the 10 website approach, one for each ccTLD and hosting in its local country would be my recommendation.

Realistically speaking, a single .com address can be provided and you can target each individual country from the same domain with sub-folders i.e. mydomain.com/uk/. Some advantages of a single domain:

• certificates only need to be purchased once (i.e. Verisign, TRUSTe, etc) and they will apply to the entire site

• the site only has to be built once and not 10x

• maintenance of a single site is much easier then maintenance of 10 sites

• the hosting, domain acquisition costs, etc. are all preferable with one site

As long as your site is properly translated (i.e. human translation which is properly adjusted for each country) and the appropriate SEO adjustments are made, the site can compete. Keep in mind it is preferable to translate for countries, not languages. In other words, there is a difference between Spanish for Spain and Spanish for Mexico. Be sure to properly account for each country's individual dialect, currency, units of measurement, etc.

The ccTLD is one signal used by search engines to help determine relevancy. The hosting location is another. I lack experience with the .eu domain so I cannot comment on using that tactic. I feel the high costs and time requirements of producing 10 sites, hosting 10 sites, etc. outweigh the SEO advantages.