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What are the best practices for a multilingual website with Drupal 8 ?

There are 4 options:

1) buy one domain per language:

https://www.mydomaine.fr (for French)

https://www.mydomaine.de (for German)

2) create subdomains:

https://fr.mydomaine.com (for French)

https://de.mydomaine.com (for German)

3) create folders:

https://www.mydomaine.com/fr/ (for French)

https://www.mydomaine.com/de/ (for German)

4) the url parameter:

https://www.mydomaine.com/?language=fr (for French)

https://www.mydomaine.com/?language=de (for German)

Option 1 is too expensive so I do not retect it.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of options 2, 3 and 4?

What do you recommend ?

Regarding Option 2, if I created 2 server, should the docroot point to the same directory or should I create 2 separate sites?

Regarding option 3, I already have views in place that uses context filter based on the raw value from the URL. With a url /node/6 I like "Path component: 2". If the url is /de/node/6 must we modify "Path component" to 3 ?

Regarding option 4, it is very simple to set up but is it recommended for a good SEO ?

UPDATE

On my site I activated English and French.

The pages can be translated from the editors.

My problem is that in Google, for a node I have 3 results with different URLs.

This is bad for the SEO of my site. What should I do ?

How to fill the meta tags and the robot.txt ?

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6f4ffb58
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  • Multiple questions requiring tutorial-like answers are not a good fit for this site. Please see the community wiki and other answers here. You should also follow Google's recommendations here: Multi-regional and multilingual sites. That contains a list of Pros and Cons for URL structures. – dan Mar 29 '18 at 04:27

1 Answers1

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Wikipedia uses subdomains for different languages. Amazon uses different domains (amazon.co.in). Both have strong merits.

With subdomains (es.wikipedia.org) and domains (amazon.com vs amazon.co.in), you can use international targeting in Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools cannot internationally target with directories or parameters (/es/ or ?lang=es). So that is a strong reason to use subdomains in your case.

On the other hand, subdomains may be treated as individual sites, and Google may not pass full domain and page authority from your root domain to your subdomain. But directories on your site maintain full domain authority as a certainty.

As long as you are properly using href lang tags, you can choose between international targeting and domain authority for reasons to go with both options.

Michael d
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  • thank you, I updated my question. I want the authority of my domain and I do not want to manage multiple servers. With the url parameter the CDN can be a solution? – 6f4ffb58 Mar 29 '18 at 03:48
  • I believe that twitter and booking use this solution (my site must manage several languages and currency) it is a marketplace. – 6f4ffb58 Mar 29 '18 at 03:51
  • you can use parameters for your different languages. Other sites use them. I think Twitter does as you mention. Just try to make sure you use href lang tags – Michael d Mar 29 '18 at 04:28