Best SEO way to implement multi language store

[mikehenze]

Hi,

I have a magento 1.7 multilanguage store with the following structure:

• www.example.com/nl and www.example.com (Dutch)
• www.example.com/uk (English)
• www.example.com/de (German)

As you can see the dutch language basically has two url and this gives problems according to Roger. Both urls show the same page and therefor duplicate content.

Should i 301 www.example.com to www.example.com/nl ?
And would this not cause problems with the indexing because www.example.com is shown when searching for my keywords.

I need to have all three languages to be indexed good and used only for the correct countries.

[mikehenze]

Im using a script (maxmind geoip) to send users to the correct storefront based on their ip address.
However i would prefer to stop with this because it can be buggy and slow.

I think (correct me if im wrong) that i i set the right geotargeting in google webmaster tools AND set up brand related searches per country in a google adwords campaign to the correct storefront this would be enough and i can stop with the script.

[Alex-Harford]

Hi Michael - that's right - just create each as a new site. As well as the geotargeting, it'll help if you can get a few links from each country to the relevant version of the site, as well as replacing the Dutch address in the footer with a UK and German address, if you have them.

As for .com or .com/nl, I prefer .com because it looks cleaner. Which would be most user-friendly? Personally I think if someone typed in www.headoverheels-fashion.com and it forwarded to www.headoverheels-fashion.com/nl, and they weren't from the Netherlands, they might be a bit confused. I'm not basing that on any science, it's just an inkling. They may think they can get to an English version of the site by removing the /nl?

[mikehenze]

Hi Alex,

As for the google webmasters part.
I dont think i can set up geotargeting for each subfolder, right?

So should i just add the three different sites?
www.headoverheels-fashion.com/nl
www.headoverheels-fashion.com/uk
www.headoverheels-fashion.com/de

[mikehenze]

Hi Alex,

I would prefer to 301 the .com to .com/nl
So I would have the .com/nl .com/uk and .com/de indexed.

Would this also be a good solution?

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with Lesley that has a different domain to target each language but if this is not the choice available then use the 301 from domain.com/nl to domain.com in order to reduce to the duplicate content.

Hope this helps!

[Alex-Harford]

I'd forward http://www.headoverheels-fashion.com/nl/ to http://www.headoverheels-fashion.com - your title and meta description are in Dutch so it's obvious it's a Dutch website in the search results.

I prefer using subfolders rather than separate sites as its easier to manage and the link equity all goes to the same domain, instead of being spread around. It's still possible to geotarget Google Webmaster Tools to the subfolders. I think Google's advice is pretty good on this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en

[LesleyPaone]

From experience the absolute best is to use different domains that are targeted to the country. Like site.uk, site.com.au, ect. I have found that besides being expensive, it works really well, just have different content on each domain.