Localization or not?

**jojjewestin** · 16 March 2010, 4:46 am

Hi, I was thinking about having one of my sites in many different languages and was thinking if that is a good idea, do I spread out the power of the site too much by not being that specific to a certain market?

Is it perhaps better to have a new domain perhaps with a localized URL instead?

Either:

1. Use a like .com or .org URL and put all the different languages there under /en/ /sv/ etc.

2. Use mycasinoguide.co.uk and mincasinoguide.se as examples

What is best from a SEO pov?

Regards

**Connie B** · 16 March 2010, 10:55 pm

Hello jojjewestin,

I believe option 2 is best.

Cheers,

Connie Burstin

**Muppet** · 17 March 2010, 5:47 pm

Its not that simple. You would have built up a bunch of incoming links on your main domain, which has also aged since you started it. If you go and put all the languages on different domains they start completely from scratch as the search engines treat them as totally different sites. This problem can be mitigated somewhat by interlinking to the new domain from your main old one, but its an ongoing issue - i.e. you will have to accumulate links for multiple domains now.

On the other hand, having a local domain suffix (.se or .de or whatever) and hosting on an IP in those countries (important) is thought to be advantageous in the localised language versions of search engines.

The other thing to consider is whether the domain you have is actually available in the local domain suffixes that you are interested in. A lot of popular ones are not which means the first option may be simply impossible anyway.

e.g. say you have
xmycasinoguide.com

xmycasinoguide.se -- brand new site, no incoming links or domain age. However may be better for a local search engine, as long as you host on a local IP. Domain may not be available to register.

xmycasinoguide.com/se -- retains the SEO power of incoming links and age of your main domain. Less ongoing link-building maintenance. You won't get SE benefits from local hosting though.

se.xmycasinoguide.com -- subdomains are also treated as brand new site by SEs but in my experience can be quick to acquire similar status of your main domain if you cross-link to it. It is possible to set up local IP hosting for the subdomain but can be tricky if you are using a shared database behind the scenes.

One last thing, whatever route you go make sure you encode your pages in the local language.
i.e. <html lang="se">

**sharmawebsolution** · 17 March 2010, 7:40 pm

Hi,
we recommended on page & off page optimization for you

**jojjewestin** · 22 March 2010, 4:09 am

Hi, thanks for your replies.

Guess there is no easy answer then, starting of with a new domain then you have no links at all but on the other hand it is harder to localize a multilanguage site in terms of hosting etc. So it comes down to what is most important.

I guess having links in correct language xx pointing to yoursite.com/xx is an ok option then since you can make some use of all links to the domain.

Regards Georg

**Nandakishore** · 22 March 2010, 5:57 am

The biggest problem of having a site in different languages is to have content of each language, whether on a local domain or .com etc., linguistically correct. I have seen many sites whose German versions are just horrible to read, perhaps translated using some automatic translation tools, like the Google translation tool. It is not enough to get them translated once by professional translators. They must be continuously updated in each language.

**jojjewestin** · 22 March 2010, 10:07 am

Yes, to be able to have the site in different languages you need to have someone really good at the language itself, Google translator is far from being good enough for creating content, perhaps especially when it comes to gaming.

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