International SEO: the best domain structure for your multilingual website

The main goal of setting up multilingual websites is to ensure your users find the right version of your site. Choosing the right domain structure for your international website can be a challenge, as it affects the structure of your website. For the best results, many different factors should be considered. This article aims to analyse some of these factors, and give you an insight into which strategy would work best for your site, above all in terms of multilingual SEO.

Overall there are three different recommended approaches one could take, and each has its pros and cons depending on your situation.

Country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs): example.co.uk, example.de, example.fr

Pros

• ccTLDs could increase CTRs from users who prefer local domains: it immediately tells users you are active in their market.
• The domain name itself can be localised. This can be particularly important for languages that do not use a Latin alphabet.
• The server location is irrelevant (ccTLD overrides server location)

Cons

• Using ccTLDs splits backlink authority across the multiple domains. Therefore, you will need to ensure that each domain receives enough backlinks from external domains to speed up indexing and increase authority. This also means that when you already have a top-level domain for instance a .com, you lose the benefit of the trust and authority built up by this site.
• It is usually more expensive and time-consuming to buy many domains and renew their licenses. This is especially true if you are dealing with squatters. In addition, implementing and maintaining each domain requires more IT resources.
• Cookies cannot be shared across multiple locales: users will have to visit each site separately to activate them.
• Localising by language often isn’t the best option, since many languages are spoken in multiple countries and a country’s TLD may not be the language code. Even in cases where the TLD does match the language code (such as Spain: ES), search engines may assume that the site is only appropriate for users from Spain, not for all Spanish speakers, which can be detrimental to rankings in, for example, South America.
• Some countries have strict ccTLD requirements, for example for a .au domain, you must have an Australian Business Number (ABN) and anyone who registers a .ru domain must supply their birthdate, passport number, date and location.

Why Choose Top Level Domains?

In short, if you’re aiming for a stronger local presence, ccTLD is the recommended approach. However, this option requires a significant financial investment upfront. Brands that already have a presence in international markets usually choose this structure because they already have large audiences, and usually local offices in their target countries.

Such brands also possess the development, marketing, and design resources to build and maintain multiple sites, all customised for regional audiences to develop unique, localised content and regional link outreach. This is also the recommended approach for companies with significantly different product catalogues or services for each region.

Sub-Directories: A Single Domain, with Sub-Directories Such as: example.com/en/, and example.com/es/

Pros

• Using sub-directories means you will have one consolidated backlink profile.
• Low maintenance costs: it’s easy to set up and manage within one host server.
• It’s easier to split pages between different languages and markets, such as /es-es and /es-mx

Cons

• It doesn’t allow for 100% geolocation on the site in each language. This can be a drawback to getting a good ranking in queries for the country you’re targeting.
• It’s not possible to localise the domain name.

Why Choose Sub-Directories?

This strategy is especially good for well-established sites with a high domain authority looking to expand into international markets. While geotargeting isn’t the most effective, because you don’t have a domain name or IP per country, these factors are outweighed by the power of your main site. If you don’t have a business with local offices, this strategy is worth considering.

You will be able to host all your content on one generic domain (usually a .com), which will conserve the authority and trust that was built up for your main site. It is also a good approach if you don’t have a high volume of content, or do not have drastically different product catalogues or services for each region. It’s also effective for keeping maintenance costs low, since you will save on the resource cost required to set up and maintain multiple sites and undertake regional link outreach.

Sub-Domains: en.example.com, and es.example.com

Pros

• Subdomains will support localisation by country or by language.
• Setting up and maintaining subdomains is easier and more economical compared to ccTLDs.
• Unlike TLDs, cookies can be shared across all locales.

Cons

• It’s not possible to localise the domain name.
• Subdomains may look less local to users compared to a TLD: users might not recognise their country or language from the URL alone, does “ES” mean Spain or Spanish?
• Similar to ccTLD each subdomain must be indexed separately, requiring more resources for link building campaigns.

Why Choose Sub-Domains?

Typically, subdomains don’t have quite enough advantages over ccTLDs or sub-directories to make them a viable option. However, it might make a lot more sense for smaller e-commerce businesses who don’t possess the resources to invest in managing different sites and inventories. It’s also best for companies with a desire to keep their brand name in the main domain, but who need separate international sites for internal business purposes.

In the end, many factors will affect the performance of your multilingual website. These include the quality of your local content, the number of backlinks, and making sure your geotargeting is set up correctly by adding each language (or locale) to Google Search Console and implementing hreflang tags. These are just a few examples of the many aspects that could affect the performance of multilingual websites. Based on the above listed pros and cons, you can evaluate which site structure makes the most sense in relation to your business needs.