Hi I’m building a website in dutch, and on the index.html page there is an english flag for visitors to click on to get an english version on the site.
I’m wondering, specifically keeping SEO in mind, whats good practice considering web directories.
The dutch is www.website.com/index.html
would the english be something along the line of www.website.com/index-en.html?
any light shed would be appreciated.
2
Answers
In first place Google recommend countries specific domain (but is so expensive).
So I recommend subdomains (en.website.com) but if you can not create subdomains also you can use directories like: website.com/en/
Take a look to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
Basically, Google will just take the default language to crawl which in this case is Dutch. If your website have separate English pages, not those using translator widget those sort, Google will also index it as separate pages. But in search engine, it will look like Dutch and English version of index.html next of another.
Have a look at this >
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-html-language-declarations
Hyphen would be good but remember not to overuse. Refrain from using other symbols. Google regards overusing of symbols as spammy.