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Hi Gianluca,

Thanks very much for the helpful response.  I agree with your recommendation, linking building across authoritative sites for each of the languages targeted is probably the best way to approach this.

Interestingly, Google Analytics indicates that the vast majority of French (language) visitors are indeed from France, with less than 6% coming from other french speaking countries, so I think it makes sense to register a country top level domain in future to ensure the best chance at competitive visibility here (and in the UK, US).

What you've written about Yandex is very interesting.  I myself am new to global SEO so will be doing research.  I will also email seomoz to see exactly how best to handle the subfolders.

Thanks again!

Thanks very much for this Kane!

This article is very helpful as I do think geo targeting can be limiting for languages like French that aren't restricted to a single geographic region.

In terms of the campaign set up within SEO moz, is there any point in tracking sub folders separately?  I am considering geographic targeting for the russian language version (.com/ru) and it probably makes sense to track this separately for visibility on Yandex, right?   What do you think?

Hi All,

I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages.

The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English.  The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers.

I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's.  Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ?   As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins?

My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)?

If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,

vantresca