jj1

Am not quite sure if this is the right place to post this, but I have a French chateau site for an English person who's gone to France and set up a chateau largely for English guests. The site is an extablished .co.uk site, hosted in England, that's doing well in the serps for most local searches from England.

The customer now wants to have a French version of the site to attract more French guests. The French site would be EXACTLY the same as the English site only in French (I would probably get the original translation from the Google translate tool and then give her the option of asking a French contact to correct grammar if she so chooses - cost will be an issue here). Some French customers would come via referrals fromthe local tourist office site, others from search engines.

What is the best way of tackling this? Should I have a French subdomain on the site and if so is there a "best" format for the subdomain. For example should I add a subdomain to the Gascony Chateau Auch Gers Fleurance Vic-Fezensac Armagnac Chateau 32190 site:

Someone suggested this to me but am not sure whether the fr.chateaudeplehaut does any good in telling Google that this is a French site??

Or should I just say chateaudeplehaut.co.uk/fr/default.htm and chateaudeplehaut.co.uk/fr/region/region.htm etc

Would appreciate any feedback as I want to get this right before jumping in.

Also, is a French subdomain of a .co.uk site likely to do well - or reasonably well - in the French serps? I can't see the customer wanting to spend too much money on creating a brand new site, so would really hesitate before suggesting a new French site, but want to know my facts before speaking to her.

I assume that I would not be hit for duplicate content within the site - each of the 10 English pages would have a duplicate French page (only the page would be in French not English)?

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Bury St Edmunds website designer
Kitchens Bury St Edmunds

grantw

If you go with fr.chateaudeplehaut you will be able to specify the subdomain as an individual site in google webmaster tools and set the target location to France.

Grant

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grantw

Scratch that:

No idea then mate

Grant

wb

How about getting the .com and creating an en and fr subdomain and targetting as Grant suggested? Or keep the .co.uk as it is, buy the .fr domain and have a duplicated but translated version linked from the .co.uk

jj1

Grantw:
Many thanks for this - I had no idea this facility was available. Have just checked out webmaster tools and the example they give has www.example.com - would this still work even though the site is a .co.uk????

Also, presumably - as this is a subdomain - we don't need to buy a new site? (You can tell I'm not well up on domains fromt he question).

wb:
If we bought the .com, wouldn't this then mean an upset in the serps as it would then be a new site? Or would a 301 redirect compeltely take care of this? (As stated, the .co.uk site is pretty well at the top of the serps for most English searches).

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Bury St Edmunds website designer
Kitchens Bury St Edmunds

grantw

No sorry, please see my second post above

Grant

wb

On Webmaster Tools you can specify a change of domain and it tells you what to do you would change this from the .co.uk to en.domain.com and target it to the UK - this should keep any SERPs however somebody please correct me if i'm wrong.

Then you can set up the fr.domain.com and target it to France

namealot

Register the .fr and host in france why waste your time doing anything else…
French are unlikely to look at a co.uk domain or a .com.etc they have a localised view. Germany its all about .de…? England is all about co.uk...? France is all about .fr …? .fr hosted in France going to score higher than a co.uk etc hosted in England... It would also lower your seo score.. keywords, relavance etc having both hosted on same ip. If your trying for both then you need both... if they don't want to spend the money registering in france and hosting there (its peanuts ) then why waste your time find a client with money

It may be top of searches for english but doubt the french will be using english to search...

FagEnd

Go with .eu and cover all bases.

.eu ranks great in google EU countries for relevant stuff. Most people don't like .eu but who cares, google does

Just check out my sig site for bike hire. Page 1 in many European countries for "bike hire europe" etc etc and there is almost no site content yet. It's still being developed outsource.

crabfoot

The French are very "partisan" about some things - and I can imagine them getting very stroppy about buying on a co.uk.

LOL I went to great trouble trying to sell things on French eBay once, and nobody would buy from me. I was actually dropshipping goods from a Taiwanese friend, and at very reasonable prices.

French sellers were buying the goods from my friend off US eBay, then doubling their money on French eBay. We could not break into the market easily - the buyers would only buy from French sellers, and they would pay double to buy from one!

You can register a .fr because the business is in France. If you want French customers, I would strongly advise you to do that. And the French language on the site must be impeccable, or they will bounce.

You could put the whole thing on a .fr with English pages; I do not see it working on a co.uk with French pages, unless you are selling scarce commodities at very reasonable prices.

When selling to the French, it helps if you litter the site with thistles and Scots flags - they like Scots, it is the English they hate. If I'm selling in France, I always carry a picture of me wearing a kilt - it breaks down barriers.

Me, I'm not funny about these things, but like Mr Blackwood, I don't like Nigerian traffic wardens ...

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