Subdirectory (International)

Subdirectory (International) is a URL structure that places each language or regional version of a site in a folder under one domain, such as example.com/fr/ for French content.

Also called a subfolder, this approach keeps every market on a single domain and separates the versions by path. A global brand might use example.com/fr/ for France, example.com/de/ for Germany, and example.com/en-gb/ for the United Kingdom, all served from the same root domain.

example.com/        default / global
example.com/fr/     French
example.com/de/     German
example.com/en-gb/  English (UK)

The main advantage is authority consolidation. Backlinks, trust, and ranking signals earned by any section accrue to the one domain, so a new market launched in a subdirectory benefits from the strength the whole site has already built. Setup and maintenance are also simpler than running multiple domains, since there is one hosting environment, one SSL certificate, and one analytics property to manage. This is why many large international sites favor subdirectories.

The trade-off is a weaker geographic signal. A folder does not tell search engines which country it targets the way a ccTLD does, so you rely on hreflang annotations to map each version to its language and region. For folders that target a specific country, you can also set geotargeting in Google Search Console. Clear, consistent folder naming and correct hreflang are what make this structure work.

Subdirectories are one of three common structures, alongside subdomains and ccTLDs. They pair naturally with a generic top-level domain like .com, which itself carries no country signal.

Related: Subdomain (International), gTLD, Geotargeting Settings, Hreflang and International SEO guide