Setting up multi-lingual stores...how to go about it?

[ppayne]

Hi, I have an extensive anime and "everything from Japan" website (www.jlist.com), which is in English of course. I may be launching a Spanish version of the site with the help of some other entrepreneurs, and I'd like some pointers about what the best way to go about this is? Should I do jlist.es, or es.jlist.com? New domain or subdomain?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[trippleweb]

If your comfortable with php I would suggest oscommerce as they can be written in as many languages needed

[ppayne]

We've already got a cart, which can made sub-stores in different directories (hand-made in PHP and C). My question is, search engine wise, which is better, a new domain (jlist.es) or a subdomain (es.jlist.com)?

Looking at Apple, they do it differently, I see -- apple.es redirects to http://www.apple.com/es/, so that's another option I guess (although it sounds messy from a Google point of view).

Any thoughts or advice on this?

[alextj]

ppayne,
I'm by no means the most expert around here, but I'd do a bit of both - for advertising I'd use .es to help people remember the site name, and have it redirect to es.jlist.com.
The reason for the subdomain instead of the directory is the (alleged) google sandbox - you should be able to get listed more quickly, and then transfer it across to the .es domain after a few months with little loss of ranking and traffic. The deeper a page is in a directory structure, the worse it ranks I believe.
Alex
PS anime is also quite big over here in Italy as well..

[bhartzer]

I've been optimizing/creating sites in 8 different languages for a few years now. The best way to do it is to keep it to one language per domain.

So, domain.es would be better than using a subdomain.

[scot184]

Interesting topic...

I own petsell.com and petsell.co.uk. If I decide to mirror my site for UK users will Google consider it duplicate content, or will they understand that you need two different websites to target two different audiences globally?

The problem is that there won't be too many changes in the UK site aside from the locations. I'll still have the same content in many sections, such as pet names, help sections, and more. It will be exactly the same content, but regionally focused when it comes to searching and registering.

Does anyone have experience with this? I wouldn't think it would be a problem, but things are crazy these days in the SERPs. And it seems it could be grounds for some kind of penalty.

Thanks.

[bhartzer]

If I decide to mirror my site for UK users will Google consider it duplicate content

Yes. Most likely the first site you put up will stay in the search results and the second one (the duplicate) will be removed entirely, if not banned. It's not really a penalty per se, it's just that the site will be completely removed from the index.

If you put up another site, the content needs to be different.

[scot184]

The content will be different in that there will be different ads from UK residents as opposed to USA residents, but beyond that, it will be the same layout, structure, etc.

Is that grounds for being banned? How can I add a UK site to my current site without being penalized? How do big sites deal with this issue.

Thanks!