Intro page for multilingual site

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Intro page for multilingual site

language selection, intro page, directory structure

rochenko2229

2:34 pm on Aug 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

Hello, I'm trying to figure it out what is the best way to setup my website page structure. It is a simple website with four pages. I will provide content in two languages: english (en) and spanish (es).
My main question is what is the best way to setup the main index page?

Option 1:
--------------------------------
mywebsite.com/index.html (en)
mywebsite.com/es/index.html (es)

Option 2:
--------------------------------
mywebsite.com/index.html (intro page w/ language selection)
mywebsite.com/en/index.html (main page english)
mywebsite.com/es/index.html (main page spanish)

Option 3:
--------------------------------
mywebsite.com/index.html (main page english)
mywebsite.com/index-es.html (main page spanish)

Which option is more consistent and which one gives me more advantage in terms of SEO?
Thanks!

BradleyT

2:45 pm on Aug 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

I would have have the default be the more popular langauge and use a language code for the 2nd language.

Let's say spanish is first and english 2nd (popularity).

example.com/index.html (spanish)
example.com/en/index.html (english)

rochenko2229

5:01 pm on Aug 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks for response.
So if spanish is my main language. Is it a better idea to setup as the default language so I define a redirect:

mywebsite.com --> redirect to --> mywebsite.com/es

in this way I am able to have consistency in the way I have directories for each language.