Multilanguage site vs SEO: unique URL per page per language?
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 6:09 am
Got a website consisting of URLs like this:
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/products
http://www.example.com/helpdesk
At the top of each page are some menu options, including a language selection. Visitors can chance the site language from English to French, Spanish, etc. Currently they end up on the same page URLs as above, but now the content appears in their language of choice. The language selection is in fact a small form, which sets a language cookie when submitted, and each page serves content in the language specified in their cookie (with the default being their browsers' language-accept setting).
The idea was that if a German user clicks a link, he'll get the content in German, while a French user clicking the same URL will get the same content in French. However I realize this setup (same URL, different content) is wrong, i.e. bad for search engines. I am now considering different alternatives to give each page in each language a unique URL, such as: (using "/something" as an example page here)
http://es.www.example.com/something
http://fr.www.example.com/something
or
http://es.example.com/something
http://fr.example.com/something
or
http://www.example.es/something
http://www.example.fr/something
or
http://www.example.com/fr/something
http://www.example.com/es/something
or
http://www.example.com/something/fr
http://www.example.com/something/es
or
http://www.example.com/something?Lang=fr
http://www.example.com/something?Lang=es
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to one of these approaches? Personally I dislike the latter (feels ugly to require URL params everywhere). And the thing with different TLD's (such as .es and .fr) is that they're country-specific, rather than language-specific. So visitors from Canada speaking French would need to use example.fr (as opposed to .ca), and visitors from Mexico / Argentina / etc would need example.es, and so on. Dunno if that's an issue?
Is one method better than others, considering SEO? (e.g. does it matter for URL-keyword-importance to put the /es or /fr "subdir" at the beginning or end of the URL? etc)
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about this? Am I missing something else?
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/products
http://www.example.com/helpdesk
At the top of each page are some menu options, including a language selection. Visitors can chance the site language from English to French, Spanish, etc. Currently they end up on the same page URLs as above, but now the content appears in their language of choice. The language selection is in fact a small form, which sets a language cookie when submitted, and each page serves content in the language specified in their cookie (with the default being their browsers' language-accept setting).
The idea was that if a German user clicks a link, he'll get the content in German, while a French user clicking the same URL will get the same content in French. However I realize this setup (same URL, different content) is wrong, i.e. bad for search engines. I am now considering different alternatives to give each page in each language a unique URL, such as: (using "/something" as an example page here)
http://es.www.example.com/something
http://fr.www.example.com/something
or
http://es.example.com/something
http://fr.example.com/something
or
http://www.example.es/something
http://www.example.fr/something
or
http://www.example.com/fr/something
http://www.example.com/es/something
or
http://www.example.com/something/fr
http://www.example.com/something/es
or
http://www.example.com/something?Lang=fr
http://www.example.com/something?Lang=es
Are there any advantages or disadvantages to one of these approaches? Personally I dislike the latter (feels ugly to require URL params everywhere). And the thing with different TLD's (such as .es and .fr) is that they're country-specific, rather than language-specific. So visitors from Canada speaking French would need to use example.fr (as opposed to .ca), and visitors from Mexico / Argentina / etc would need example.es, and so on. Dunno if that's an issue?
Is one method better than others, considering SEO? (e.g. does it matter for URL-keyword-importance to put the /es or /fr "subdir" at the beginning or end of the URL? etc)
Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions about this? Am I missing something else?