Hi there.

Actually, your plan is very good. That's actually what Matt Cutts recommends in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcSsMbFSGyc&t=160. I think we can trust his word

Hi there.

I think Google is smart enough to correlate those. I have used special characters in pretty much all of my campaigns and didn't see any bad influence, since keywords are ranking in top 3 etc.

Hope this helps.

Hi.

Interesting, I didn't see that article. Well, then, I guess, it's matter of preference.

I'd still go with different sitemaps. cause managing them individually allows script and code based automation.

Hi there.

I found this list of all available locales, if locales you're trying to do are in this list, then go ahead, otherwise it won't work.

P.S. List might be old and updated by now, but i don't think so.

• af-ZA
• am-ET
• ar-AE
• ar-BH
• ar-DZ
• ar-EG
• ar-IQ
• ar-JO
• ar-KW
• ar-LB
• ar-LY
• ar-MA
• arn-CL
• ar-OM
• ar-QA
• ar-SA
• ar-SY
• ar-TN
• ar-YE
• as-IN
• az-Cyrl-AZ
• az-Latn-AZ
• ba-RU
• be-BY
• bg-BG
• bn-BD
• bn-IN
• bo-CN
• br-FR
• bs-Cyrl-BA
• bs-Latn-BA
• ca-ES
• co-FR
• cs-CZ
• cy-GB
• da-DK
• de-AT
• de-CH
• de-DE
• de-LI
• de-LU
• dsb-DE
• dv-MV
• el-GR
• en-029
• en-AU
• en-BZ
• en-CA
• en-GB
• en-IE
• en-IN
• en-JM
• en-MY
• en-NZ
• en-PH
• en-SG
• en-TT
• en-US
• en-ZA
• en-ZW
• es-AR
• es-BO
• es-CL
• es-CO
• es-CR
• es-DO
• es-EC
• es-ES
• es-GT
• es-HN
• es-MX
• es-NI
• es-PA
• es-PE
• es-PR
• es-PY
• es-SV
• es-US
• es-UY
• es-VE
• et-EE
• eu-ES
• fa-IR
• fi-FI
• fil-PH
• fo-FO
• fr-BE
• fr-CA
• fr-CH
• fr-FR
• fr-LU
• fr-MC
• fy-NL
• ga-IE
• gd-GB
• gl-ES
• gsw-FR
• gu-IN
• ha-Latn-NG
• he-IL
• hi-IN
• hr-BA
• hr-HR
• hsb-DE
• hu-HU
• hy-AM
• id-ID
• ig-NG
• ii-CN
• is-IS
• it-CH
• it-IT
• iu-Cans-CA
• iu-Latn-CA
• ja-JP
• ka-GE
• kk-KZ
• kl-GL
• km-KH
• kn-IN
• kok-IN
• ko-KR
• ky-KG
• lb-LU
• lo-LA
• lt-LT
• lv-LV
• mi-NZ
• mk-MK
• ml-IN
• mn-MN
• mn-Mong-CN
• moh-CA
• mr-IN
• ms-BN
• ms-MY
• mt-MT
• nb-NO
• ne-NP
• nl-BE
• nl-NL
• nn-NO
• nso-ZA
• oc-FR
• or-IN
• pa-IN
• pl-PL
• prs-AF
• ps-AF
• pt-BR
• pt-PT
• qut-GT
• quz-BO
• quz-EC
• quz-PE
• rm-CH
• ro-RO
• ru-RU
• rw-RW
• sah-RU
• sa-IN
• se-FI
• se-NO
• se-SE
• si-LK
• sk-SK
• sl-SI
• sma-NO
• sma-SE
• smj-NO
• smj-SE
• smn-FI
• sms-FI
• sq-AL
• sr-Cyrl-BA
• sr-Cyrl-CS
• sr-Cyrl-ME
• sr-Cyrl-RS
• sr-Latn-BA
• sr-Latn-CS
• sr-Latn-ME
• sr-Latn-RS
• sv-FI
• sv-SE
• sw-KE
• syr-SY
• ta-IN
• te-IN
• tg-Cyrl-TJ
• th-TH
• tk-TM
• tn-ZA
• tr-TR
• tt-RU
• tzm-Latn-DZ
• ug-CN
• uk-UA
• ur-PK
• uz-Cyrl-UZ
• uz-Latn-UZ
• vi-VN
• wo-SN
• xh-ZA
• yo-NG
• zh-CN
• zh-HK
• zh-MO
• zh-SG
• zh-TW
• zu-ZA

Sure, I did this: http://bfy.tw/2hTu

Well, i see why it's being reported as 503. Cause even i can see it in developer tools. the main domain has 302 redirect and then responds with 503. Anyway, for you there is gonna be no difference in terms of seo. As far as I know google ranking algos don't use outbound links as signals. As relevance signals - sure, but not really of a much impact on rankings itself.

Sure thing

_So using /pt-br/ is fine, what really matter is letting Google know the language/location through search console and other measures what language/location the page are targeting. _

Correct, also, do look into meta tag called "hreflang":

https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

I'm not following what you mean in the last sentence: Unless you use some type of CMS, then you can just use RewriteRule or something to only display needed URL.

Most CMS systems have some type of functionality or plugins, which would let you create content in different languages within the same admin, so you wouldn't have to physically create all subfolders etc. So, whenever CMS does that, it would give you URL, but you might use htaccess rewriterule without redirect to make URL look like you want. Just google "rewrite rule without redirect" and you'll see what i'm talking about.

Hope this clarifies a bit