A common issue facing companies and organizations with an international presence is how to deploy multilingual sites across one or more Internet domain(s). In other words, should one put all the sites on a .com or .org domain, perhaps taking advantage of directories on the web server to separate each language? Is this the best solution for existing and potential customers? Will there be problems with search engine indexing and visibility?
After having tackled the issue in various SEO projects, I decided to share some of the issues that should be considered when choosing the right path for your company or organization.
Start with the search engines – but think of your visitors
Websites exist to communicate with a diverse audience – customers, potential customers, employees, investors, suppliers, etc. In the web planning and design phase, it is essential not to lose sight of the site’s target audience. But it is also highly critical to keep in mind how web sites are found on the net, starting with Google.
A website with poor search engine visibility is like a shop on a dead-end street instead of the high street / main street – perhaps very inviting, but no one passes by to stop and visit.
What factors need to be taken into account for search engines and visitors? We begin with the SEO strategy for choosing one or multiple domains. In Top level domains, subdomains or directories for Search Engine Optimization of multilingual websites?, the most common approaches are considered along with pitfalls to avoid. For those who aren’t put off by technical marketing, I also recommend reading a related article, how search engines determine the language of HTML pages. Should you want still more information, finish by reading of Accented Characters and Symbols in HTML: considerations for SEO, Usability and XML Feeds. The take away message from these articles is simple: relax. More often than not, the needs of search engines and users coincide.
What do visitors expect from an international website?
Steve Krug gives us the right answer in the title of his book “Don’t make me think“: complexity should be hidden from the users. An Italian Internet navigator who searches for “Fiat 500″ using Google Italy, should find a Fiat page highlighting the new “500″, naturally in Italian. Clicking through to the page, visitors should not have to change the site language or anything else for that matter.
I hope you find the articles useful for your work. Happy reading!
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Sean Carlos is a web marketing consultant & teacher, assisting companies with their Search (SEO + PPC = SEM), Social Media & Digital Media Measurement strategies. Sean first worked with text indexing in 1990 in a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then he worked for Hewlett-Packard Consulting and later as IT Manager of a real estate website before founding Antezeta in 2006. Sean is an 
This is a quite interesting article. Being the author of the WP-Plugin Multisite Language Switcher I get a lot of mails with questions regarding SEO.
Do you think there should be a functionality which redirects the visitors automatically to the their language too?