Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    11
    2914
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • AdamThompson
      AdamThompson last edited by

      In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites:

      Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website).

      Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AdamThompson
        AdamThompson @katemorris last edited by

        Thanks, I'll send you a PM.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • katemorris
          katemorris @AdamThompson last edited by

          Ah, I think we are getting to the root of the problem here.

          If we are talking about hreflang used correctly between two identical pages that are translated, everything Google has stated about hreflang is that it acts as a canonical. The alternate language pages would be treated as changes of each other. Ranking is more than just link equity though, so where you rank is more than that.

          In your specific situation, I see a few problems outside the use of hreflang. Can you share the domain you are talking about? If you're not comfortable sharing it here, please message me with it. There might be other things at play confusing the Google algorithm. But I need to see for sure.

          After spending the last five years looking into international expansion of websites, I can say for sure I don't recommend subdomains for language translations. It's due to the fact that using subdomains isn't very clean and doesn't work well if you want to expand to country specific content in the future.

          The way I read the original Moz post on subdomains is that the use of hreflang helps some of the assumed negatives of using subdomains, but subdomains are not the recommended solution. Mind you, the "negatives" of subdomains have not been proven in all cases either.

          Let me know about your specific case and I'll see what might be happening.

          AdamThompson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AdamThompson
            AdamThompson @katemorris last edited by

            OK, that's very good to know. I missed that.

            Here is the Google source I found that implied that hreflang tags do not combine/consolidate link metrics:

            "Generally speaking, the rel-alternate-hreflang construct does not change the ranking of your pages. However, when a page where you use this markup shows up in the search results, we may use this markup to find alternate, equivalent pages of yours. If one of those alternates is a better match for the user, their query language, and the location, then we may swap out the URL. So in practice, it won't change the ranking of your pages, but it will attempt to make sure that the best-suited URL (out of the list of alternates) is shown there." ~John Mueller

            This seems to be describing a "swap out" effect rather than a consolidation of metrics. In my mind, that sounds different. It sounds like what John is saying is that "if your main site ranks for the keyword "barcelona" in English search results, if someone searches in Spanish we'll give you the same ranking, we'll just display your Spanish URL instead". That seems different from a consolidation to me (the Spanish URL isn't being given the link authority from the main URL to help it rank for other Spanish keywords, it's just being swapped out in SERPs where the English URL already ranks). Of course Google hasn't released the details so I'm guessing a bit here.

            "Gianaluca was speaking of multiple "sites" but this is translation."

            My issues is where multiple sites and translations are the same thing, i.e. when you have different language versions of your site on different subdomains. Gianaluca seems to be saying that hreflang will not consolidate link authority across your sites that are in different languages. Here's another source saying the same thing: https://www.semrush.com/blog/7-common-hreflang-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them/

            I've got a situation now where it appears that Google is not consolidating/sharing link signals efficiently between the language versions that are hosted on separate subdomains. My concern is that part of the issue may be the fact that the different lanaguage versions are on different subdomains. That's why I'm keen to know why Moz excepts language-specific websites from their "no subdomains" advice.

            Any thoughts? 🙂

            katemorris 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • katemorris
              katemorris @AdamThompson last edited by

              Gianaluca was speaking of multiple "sites" but this is translation. Google does say it in fact:

              "By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. "

              https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

              AdamThompson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • AdamThompson
                AdamThompson @katemorris last edited by

                "use hreflang and that acts like a canonical"

                Google and other sources don't indicate that hreflang will pass/consolidate link authority. So I think hreflang and canonical tags are different in that regard. Based on that and what I've seen, I don't see that hreflang tag would negate the disadvantages of a subdomain. If you have evidence it does, though, I am very interested! 🙂

                katemorris 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • katemorris
                  katemorris last edited by

                  I actually disagree with the subdomain exception for languages. You can use a subdomain for languages, but it doesn't look right in my opinion. The reason that text is in there though is because if you use translated content (which is different from regional or country targeted content), you should use hreflang and that acts like a canonical. The possible downsides of a subdomain are negated with that tagging.

                  The writer of this text you are referencing is not saying subdomains are preferred, merely that with languages the downsides of a subdomain are not applicable.

                  AdamThompson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Mobilio
                    Mobilio @AdamThompson last edited by

                    Well - IMHO we are too deep in technology and know differences between multi-regional and multi-lingual sites. But when talking to someone "newbie" he easy can be confused with ton of terms. That's why they give example with something easy to be understanding.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • AdamThompson
                      AdamThompson @Mobilio last edited by

                      "But you can't change server location with subdirectories. With subdomain you can make de.example.com and place this in German server and es.example.com and place this in Spanish server."

                      What you're talking about is geographic targeting, but Moz was specifically referring to language-targeting. Those are similar, but they are subtly different things.

                      Language-specific sites are not necessarily targeted to a specific country. They can target multiple countries (eg Spanish speakers in US, Spain, Mexico, etc.) or you might have two Language-specific sites targeting the same country (eg an English and a Spanish site both for the US).

                      So if a language-specific site isn't a geographic-targeted site, I still don't understand why Moz would recommend a subdomain in that case.

                      Mobilio 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • donford
                        donford @Mobilio last edited by

                        Great Answer Peter!

                        /thumbs

                        Don

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Mobilio
                          Mobilio last edited by

                          Well there are 4 types of multi-lingual or multi-regional sites that are described here:
                          https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
                          Summary - best is ccTLD, next is subdomain with gTLDS. On 3rd is subdirectory with gTLDS and URL parameters is last.

                          So Moz is trying to diving expert advise to webmasters to NOT use subdomains and giving famous blog example. I fall in this trap almost 15 years ago with subdomain. I wish someone to told me about this then... Other examples can be catalog and different products (catalog.example.com vs. example.com/catalog; product.example.com vs. example.com/product/). This advice in same subdomain keep link juice inside, but you probably know this.

                          GSC allow setting different directories to specific geo-location. That's true. But you can't change server location with subdirectories. With subdomain this is possible. Example - one company with site of Spanish and German. With subdirectory i have one server and /de and /es folders. But in this case server location is one and only. And server IP is some of signals for geo-targeting so you have tough choice where to be. With subdomain you can make de.example.com and place this in German server and es.example.com and place this in Spanish server.

                          That's why subdomains for multilingual sites is notable exception of golden rule "do not use subdomains".

                          donford AdamThompson 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • 1 / 1
                          • First post
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          Browse Questions

                          Explore more categories

                          • Moz Tools

                            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                          • SEO Tactics

                            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                          • Community

                            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                          • Digital Marketing

                            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                          • Research & Trends

                            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                          • Support

                            Connect on product support and feature requests.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • brucepomeroy

                            Spammy page with canonical reference to my website

                            A potentially spammy website http://www.rofof.com/ has included a rel canonical tag pointing to my website. They've included the tag on thousands of pages on their website. Furthermore http://www.rofof.com/ appears to have backlinks from thousands of other low-value domains For example www.kazamiza.com/vb/kazamiza242122/, along with thousands of other pages on thousands of other domains all link to pages on rofof.com, and the pages they link to on rofof.com are all canonicalized to a page on my site. If Google does respect the canonical tag on rofof.com and treats it as part of my website then the thousands of spammy links that point to rofof.com could be considered as pointing to my website. I'm trying to contact the owner of www.rofof.com hoping to have the canonical tag removed from their website. In the meantime, I've disavowed the www.rofof.com, the site that has canonical tag. Will that have any effect though? Will disavow eliminate the effect of a rel canonical tag on the disavowed domain or does it only affect links on the disavowed website? If it only affects links then should I attempt to disavow all the pages that link to rofof.com? Thanks for reading. I really appreciate any insight you folks can offer.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brucepomeroy
                            2
                          • lynetteboss

                            Do I need to add the actual language for meta tags and description for different languages? cited for duplicate content for different language

                            Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and this community so pardon my questions. We recently launched on our drupal site mandarin language  version for the entire site. And when i do the crawl site, i get duplicate content for the pages that are in mandarin. Is this a problem or can i ignore this? Should i make different page titles for the different languages? Also, for the metatag and descriptions, would it better in the native language for google to search for? thanks in advance.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lynetteboss
                            0
                          • advmedialab

                            Problems in indexing a website built with Magento

                            Hi all My name is Riccardo and i work for a web marketing agency. Recently we're having some problem in indexing this website www.farmaermann.it which is based on Magento. In particular considering google web master tools the website sitemap is ok (without any error) and correctly uploaded. However only 72 of 1.772 URL have been indexed; we sent the sitemap on google webmaster tools 8 days ago. We checked the structure of the robots.txt consulting several Magento guides and it looks well structured also.
                            In addition to this we noticed that some pages in google researches have different titles and they do not match the page title defined in Magento backend. To conclude we can not understand if this indexing problems are related to the website sitemap, robots.txt or something else.
                            Has anybody had the same kind of problems? Thank you all for your time and consideration Riccardo

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advmedialab
                            0
                          • damienthivolle

                            Subdomains vs directories on existing website with good search traffic

                            Hello everyone, I operate a website called Icy Veins (www.icy-veins.com), which gives gaming advice for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, two titles from Blizzard Entertainment. Up until recently, we had articles for both games on the main subdomain (www.icy-veins.com), without a directory structure. The articles for World of Warcraft ended in -wow and those for Hearthstone ended in -hearthstone and that was it. We are planning to cover more games from Blizzard entertainment soon, so we hired a SEO consultant to figure out whether we should use directories (www.icy-veins.com/wow/, www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/, etc.) or subdomains (www.icy-veins.com, wow.icy-veins.com, hearthstone.icy-veins.com). For a number of reason, the consultant was adamant that subdomains was the way to go. So, I implemented subdomains and I have 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones, and after 2 weeks, the amount of search traffic we get has been slowly decreasing, as the new URLs were getting index. Now, we are getting about 20%-25% less search traffic. For example, the week before the subdomains went live we received 900,000 visits from search engines (11-17 May). This week, we only received 700,000 visits. All our new URLs are indexed, but they rank slightly lower than the old URLs used to, so I was wondering if this was something that was to be expected and that will improve in time or if I should just go for subdomains. Thank you in advance.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damienthivolle
                            0
                          • SMG-Texas

                            301 Redirect of subdomain?

                            Fellow Mozzers, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around a redirect issue and thought it was worth posing the question to the Moz community.  I did a search first but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for. How does a 301 redirect work when you redirect a sub domain example.homepage.com to www.homepage.com but you keep the sub directories of example.homepage.com/page-1 active and are trying to rank them?  I'm dealing with a current project where this is happening and this doesn't make sense to me, to redirect the subdomain if you're also trying to rank/create search traffic for pages, sub directories on example.homepage.com. This also get's into the debate of if a sub domain site is viewed as it's own website and therefore has to rank itself.  If this is true, it seems like we're kind of killing the authority of the site by redirecting it. Additionally, www.homepage.com has a much stronger link profile than example.homepage.com I hope this makes sense.  Any thoughts are appreciated.  Thanks for your time.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SMG-Texas
                            0
                          • enotes

                            Sitemap on a Subdomain

                            Hi, For various reasons I placed my sitemaps on a subdomain where I keep images and other large files (static.example.com). I then submitted this to Google as a separate site in Webmaster tools. Is this a problem? All of the URLs are for the actual site (www.example.com), the only issue on my end is not being able to look at it all at the same time. But I'm wondering if this would cause any problems on Google's end.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | enotes
                            0
                          • HiteshBharucha

                            Duplicate content on subdomains.

                            Hi Mozer's, I have a site www.xyz.com and also geo targeted sub domains www.uk.xyz.com, www.india.xyz.com and so on. All the sub domains have the content which is same as the content on the main domain that is www.xyz.com. So, I want to know how can i avoid content duplication. Many Thanks!

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiteshBharucha
                            0
                          • CommercePundit

                            Can I Improve Organic Ranking by Restrict Website Access to Specific IP Address or Geo Location?

                            I am targeting my website in US so need to get high organic ranking in US web search. One of my competitor is restricting website access to specific IP address or Geo location. I have checked multiple categories to know more. What's going on with this restriction and why they make it happen? One of SEO forum is also restricting website access to specific location. I can understand that, it may help them to stop thread spamming with unnecessary Sign Up or Q & A. But, why Lamps Plus have set this? Is there any specific reason? Can I improve my organic ranking? Restriction may help me to save and maintain user statistic in terms of bounce rate, average page views per visit, etc...

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
                            1

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          • Digital Marketers
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter

                          Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.