Problem with homepage's SEO when using subfolders in a multi language website
- by Antonio
After watching a hundreds of threads about multilanguage website I haven't found an answer to my specific problem, so I think its not a common issue and I must have done something terribly wrong ;-)
We have a brand.com website in DE main language and the following subfolders:
/de/ = canonical of / + redirect to /
/it/
/en/
When I crawl google.com for EN keywords or google.it for IT keywords then I get as results the homepage in German language (both title and description) as the top result with no trace of the /it/ or the /en/ homepage.
Is this because /it/ and /en/ both needs a separate link building strategy?
I've already configured Google webmaster tool into the following way:
brand.com, no language preference
brand.com/de/, de language
brand.com/it/, it language
brand.com/en/, en language
Perhaps having "/" as DE main page is it wrong and I should use a different approach?
i.e. like having "/" to be a 301 to /de/ instead ?
Thanks in advance.