Is there a pattern to define subdomain names for multilanguage websites?

Question

I got a multilanguage website.

I will have a lot of subdomain names, something like this: mysubdomain1.mysite.com, mysubdmoain2.mysite.com, mysubdomain3.mysite.com. Each one needs to be a multilanguage website, but for SEO reasons, which is the best/simple/clear method to define a subdomain/domain structure?

en = english version

• 1) en.mysubdomain1.mysite.com

• 2) mysubdomain1.mysite.com/en

• 3) mysite.com/mysubdomain/en

• 4) en.mysite.com/mysubdomain

• 5) mysubdomain.mysite.com/?hl=en

pt = portuguese version

• 1) pt.mysubdomain1.mysite.com

• 2) mysubdomain1.mysite.com/pt

• 3) mysite.com/mysubdomain/pt

• 4) pt.mysite.com/mysubdomain

• 5) mysubdomain.mysite.com/?hl=pt

---

Oracle uses:

http://www.oracle.com/global/au/

Yahoo uses:

http://au.yahoo.com/

Microsoft uses:

http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/

Google uses:

http://www.google.com/intl/es/

http://www.google.com/?hl=pt-BR

Answer 1

The only pattern you really need to worry about is consistency and cleanliness.

Stick to one, either folders or subdirectories, and keep it consistent throughout the use of your sites.

SEO is also about how it affects the user experience. When you pick a way of creating your language dependent URLs, keeping to a convention helps in that if a visitor landed on the Spanish language version, they could reasonably guess by changing some letters in the URL to read up on the English or German versions.

If you go with subdomains, you can target them with different IP addresses and the search engines may take into account where it is hosted in serving up relevant country/language specific results. You can't really do that with subfolders.

Subfolders can have the effect of filtering up any kind of link karma/authority to the main domain. Using subdomains might split that across and cause dilution.

Answer 2

I think sub folders are more popular. I have defintely seen them more in URLs.

Something like

http://www.domain.com/au/content/path

Answer 3

Proper SEO-wise solution is international sub-domains. Search engines treats subdomains as separate sites, and recognize each site's localization to display language-specific results. Dedicated internationalized site performs better than "babylon"-like mixture of several languages.