Kate, when I say that I am targeting countries, the content on the website will obviously be translated into their local language. So, it will be translating but for different countries on the website. I hope you meant the same thing when you said "and not just translating". I believe the best way to go would be to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains to maintain the domain legacy and authority across the countries.

I will be targeting actual countries Kate. Will also be using Google webmasters to geo-target for different sub-domains/sub-directories.

Thanks Federico, will take a look at the video. Though, for me the battle still remains on how to proceed, for now the sub-directory option looks the one. I hope to get some more views on this before I finalize the architecture.

Hi Folks - Need your advice on the pros and cons of going with a sub-domain vs a sub-directory approach for a multi lingual website. The best would be a ccTLD but that is not possible now, so I would be more interested in knowing your take on these 2 options.

Though, I have gone through http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/ and this somewhat vouches for a sub-directory, but what would you say'?

Well Brandon, Bing has officially said that they see it as only a hint and determine in their senses as to what is right, but SEO folks do use the tag and I don't think anyone has yet had a problem. You can have a glimpse at the latest SEOmoz talk on this too.

Cheers,

Thats great! The canonical URLs are showing URLs without slash as they are probably reflecting their original URL which is without slash. Hope Google clears them soon..

You are welcome.

Well, the first time you did submit the sitemap right, but now since Google has found new URLs on your website and indexed them, it would be good to notify the big G that they are no longer a part of your website and resubmitting would not hurt.

About the redirections, Google does take a bit of time to understand that the URLs have permanently moved and will gradually remove them from the index. So, keep checking the index for the trailing slash URLs and when they are gone, you can remove the redirections.

Cheers,

Yups, its done. Just need to be sure if the Home Page is fine. The indexed version of the Home Page stays as it is without any redirection.

Cheers,

Sounds good, do keep a check to make it 100% sure. I believe the SE's will be fine now.

Cheers,

I think some of these posts can help you understand:

http://html5boilerplate.com/docs/Proper-usage-of-trailing-slash-redirects/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4167539/remove-trailing-slash-using-htaccess-except-for-home-landing-page

Do try this a test environment and take a backup of the .htaccess file before making any changes, Have it go through a programmer.

Cheers,

Jvalops,

This is a common scenario in SEO when you have 2 versions indexed of the same URL. This bascially creates a duplicate issue. Now, this situation has a solution which includes 2 things to implement:

1. Fix it from the search engines's perspective.

2. Make changes at the server level.

You did remove the trailing slash so you fixed it at the server level but you left the search engines to think - Where did the URL go? Am I supposed to show a 404 for that or what?.

So, it is important that you first fix them for the SE's and then make any server level changes because you never know how quick the crawlers can re-visit the disappeared URL and take their own action. Since this is just a recent change I hope that the SE;s will not evaluate it in a negative way but you should be quick to inform them. Now, since you have already removed it, do add a code in the .htaccess file stating that any URL with a slash redirects it to the URL without slash. I hope there are no URLs that have to end with a slash (just have a re-look on this, the home page and others).

After this is done, to make things more clear to the search engines, resubmit your XML sitemap with all the correct URLs on the website and I think you will be just fine.

On the rankings, I don't think it will be affected, unless there was a re-crawl after the indexation.

Cheers,