Cultures, languages and domains

[WinMore]

I have been struggling with how to proceed in a very specific situation.

After a lot of deliberation, I think I have come up with a solution, but I'd rather hear some opinions before I proceed.

An established personality wants to create a website for a specific e-sport. He noticed that in his region there is almost no competition (competing websites are all trash), and it looks to be very profitable.

There are some complications in his region. Everyone speaks the same language, but some parts of the regions don't like each-other. The regions both have different domain extensions.
(Think if France would also speak German)

Going for a .de domain, would lose most of the French traffic, and vice-versa. (I estimate 25% would be lost)

To avoid this problem, I figured I would go with a subdomain. www.de.mywebsite.com
Considering they both speak the German language (Deutsch in this example), I expect the issue would mostly be solved.

Does anyone see some obvious flaws in this reasoning?
I have read that subdomains count as different websites. I have also read the opposite.

If they really are seen as different websites (SEO-wise), the only option would be to go for www.mywebsite.com/de/
I just need to find out what approach is the better one, so I can move on.

Next up: Considering this personality knows multiple languages, I expect it would be possible to profit from the general domain authority generated from the main domain (or if that's the better option, the subfolder), when he wants to expand to different languages?
For example: www.mywebsite.com for English, and www.es.mywebsite.com for Spanish?
(or www.mywebsite.com for English and www.mywebsite.com/es/ for Spanish)

Having local authority to boost the content for other languages would be a huge help, because the niche is quite competitive in some other languages, and that could be a nice way to get a foot in the door. But only if it works that way...

He owns his brand name in all the regional extensions + .com

EDIT: I figured I should note that France and Germany are WAY bigger than the real regions.
Together they're about 60% of Canada population-wise.

_____

I just read another article on Hostgator. https://www.hostgator.com/blog/what-are-subdomains-affect-seo/
Here they claim subdomains are seen as different websites.
But later on they claim

Ranking in niche markets can take a lot less time and energy. By ranking and building authority and smaller markets this authority you build will help to reinforce the authority of the main domain.

This is so confusing to me...

 

[Ryuzaki]

Subdomains are seen as separate websites, for sure.

That Hostgator quote can hold true if you have a site like stuff.com and you build cars.stuff.com and toys.stuff.com then interlink the sub-domains back up to the main domain. I don't think it's smart.

An example was when the Farmer update came around. Ezine Articles decided to put each author on their own subdomain to keep the whole site from tanking. This could possibly have worked since all of them would be fairly heavily interlinked, but you lose the "domain-wide" metric power of the top-level domain while also starting fresh on a ton of subdomains.

In that case, you should just roll out a ton of new domains. Another keyword farming site did just that. I can't think of the brand, but rather than do subdomains they bought a ton of domains for every niche they covered. It's nearly the exact same solution with the same consequences regarding domain-wide metrics, but they're crushing it now and Ezine isn't, because they have a bunch of new, independent, branded properties functioning as real websites instead of a bunch of subdomains functioning as repositories for author content. One is going to get more love from the public, and thus links and everything else.

Back to your original question, what I would do in this scenario is get a nice branded .com, then put it in Search Console and tell Google specifically which region you intend to target. Global top-level domains (gTLDs) can be micro-targeted at regions, but country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) cannot be broadened back out to the global arena.

So since you're talking about targeting multiple regions and languages it makes sense to start with a gTLD, and thus a .com for branding.

Since he owns that and all of the regional ccTLDs, I would either do as you said and use subfolders for languages (not sure how this will pan out if you tell Google you're targeting a specific region in Search Console) or just make a network of sites that all look alike, all interlink maybe using language flags at the very top of the site and bottom, and pay people to subscribe to the main RSS feed and do the translations for you as you publish.

If I did this I'd look into something like Wordpress Multisite so I could manage them all at once in terms of design and plugins.

This is also quite the undertaking. It might be better to just work on the one main one and get it earning. Get to the money first. Then if it proves itself, duplicate the site to another domain, pay someone to translate it (this will keep all the pictures and formatting in place), then have them continually translate new posts from the main site. Rinse and repeat, probably with WP Multisite.

 

[WinMore]

This is also quite the undertaking. It might be better to just work on the one main one and get it earning. Get to the money first. Then if it proves itself, duplicate the site to another domain, pay someone to translate it (this will keep all the pictures and formatting in place), then have them continually translate new posts from the main site. Rinse and repeat, probably with WP Multisite.

Yes, the plan would be to focus on one specific region first, and expand to the second one later.
Considering they have the same language that shouldn't be a problem I think.

Would it be a problem if I created www.mywebsite.fr and www.mywebsite.de with exactly the same content (minus some minor localized information) in exactly the same language if I geo-targetted the regions?

If that's a problem, I'll go for www.mywebsite.com/de/, and no geo-targetting.
I can't input the same 2 regions in Search Console, I have to pick one. It seems better to keep it universal, if I can't have 2 websites up with the same content.
Use Hreflang to set the language and hope that's enough of an indicator for google.

I'm pretty sure he'll start with only one language, but I don't think people would mind seeing /de after the domain for every link. Most people aren't really looking past the .com part I would think.

 

[bernard]

Most European countries are nationalistic in that they regard their local domain name as much more authoritative than .com domain with a subdomain. Most would regard a .com domain as foreign.

If you really want to engage, I would recommend local domain names and then link them with href lang tags.

 

[ToffeeLa]

Most European countries are nationalistic in that they regard their local domain name as much more authoritative than .com domain with a subdomain. Most would regard a .com domain as foreign.

If you really want to engage, I would recommend local domain names and then link them with href lang tags.

Living in a European country as well, I'm not sure that I would agree with that.

Certainly, if you were trying to attract the French (or French-speaking) market, then having an .fr is infinitely better than, say, having a .de. Both from the view of marketing and technical search factors.

But .coms are very common (and tend to give the impression of a multinational site). Even some more obscure ones (such as .cc and .tv) were not unusual a while back and, certainly in the more net-savvy countries, using stuff like .io is up-and-coming in suitable (tech?) markets. Even .info historically had more usage by authoritative sites in Europe than elsewhere.

 

[WinMore]

Most European countries are nationalistic in that they regard their local domain name as much more authoritative than .com domain with a subdomain. Most would regard a .com domain as foreign.

If you really want to engage, I would recommend local domain names and then link them with href lang tags.

I agree for the most part. But I'm not sure that works when both domains have the same language.
I would think Google would consider them as duplicate content, and maybe even consider one a copycat?
Do href lang tags really stop that?
In my regions example, it is 100% true. Both regions are just as trustworthy, and developed. But they see each-other as waaaay less trustworthy than their own.

We have decided to scrap the subdomain idea. We will probably go for subfolders, based on language.

I'm pretty sure .com is fine for most European countries, as long you redirect the local domain towards your .com, so they can't make a mistake when typing in your homepage.

Considering it's a .com, he will probably go for English and the local language on the .com .
Other languages (I don't think he will ever get there, but who knows), he plans to buy the local domains.

Not sure how to handle that with French Canada, and France, or Mexico and Spain for that matter.
Or Portugal and Brazil. Smashing them all on the .com could be an option, but I have to agree with @bernard that locality has something going for it.

Maybe it's worth risking the "duplicate content", that I'm so afraid off. Might not even be a real thing.

 

[Stones]

Hreflang tags include region and language so there should be no issue with dup content so long as you set up the tags correctly