International Optimization on Google

We get asked this Q a lot.

“If I’m looking to rank well in Germany or France as well as my “home” country, should I keep the foreign language content on my main .com or split it out onto domain.de, domain.fr etc

How about if I use domain.com/de or even de.domain.com?”

This is our view as of Dec 2008.

1) Preferred Option: Domain.de
Separate the content onto it’s own site if you can.
Eg: domain.de, domain.fr etc

Advantage: Best way for a site to rank well in a given Google territory
Disadvantage: Very costly to build the strength of each site independently

The following 2 options are relatively equal in our view as Google allows site owners to target a specific location using either method.

2) Next Best Option: Domain.com/de
Put all your foreign content into it’s own section on your main website.
Doing so will allow you to piggy-back on the current strength (if any) of your existing site
EG: domain.com/de, domain.com/fr etc

Advantage: If your existing site is old, well established and ranking well, you can rank highly in the foreign language very quickly.

Disadvantages:
You are unlikely to appear for approx 10% of searches done on “Pages from Germany/France/Italy etc”. This is not likely to be critical.

For very competitive keywords, you are unlikely to beat competitors using the “preferred option” above.

3) Alternative Option: de.Domain.com
Put all your foreign content onto it’s own mini-site / subdirectory off your main website.
Doing so means you are essentially starting a brand new site from scratch
EG: de.domain.com, fr.domain.com etc

Advantage: Makes it easier to manage your website content. You can set the preferred target country in Google’s Webmaster Tools.

Disadvantages:
You are unlikely to appear for approx 10% of searches done on “Pages from Germany/France/Italy etc”. This is not likely to be critical.

For very competitive keywords, you are unlikely to beat competitors using the “preferred option” above.