Hyperflow Locale-Specific Domains

Split your Webflow Localized site into separate domains for improved local SEO.

Webflow localization is very useful, but it can only deliver the site's localed content in a locale-specific path structure.

For example, a site with English as the primary locale, and French and German as alternate locales might be delivered as;

Locale	Homepage	e.g. Path	e.g. Localized Path
English ( primary )	/	/contact	/contact
French ( alternate )	/fr	/fr/contact	/fr/contactez-nous
German ( alternate )	/de	/de/contact	/de/kontakt

This works and is SEO friendly, but it loses the benefit of a Country-Code Top-Level Domain ( ccTLD ) which has an intrinsic locale

Websites utilizing ccTLDs often experience better rankings in country-specific search results. For example, a .fr domain is more likely to rank higher in searches conducted from France compared to a generic .com domain, assuming other SEO factors are equal.

Ideally this makes more sense for some sites;

Locale	e.g. Path	e.g. Localized Path
English ( primary )	https://www.mysite.com/contact	https://www.mysite.com/contact
French ( alternate )	https://www.mysite.fr/contact	https://www.mysite.fr/contactez-nous
German ( alternate )	https://www.mysite.de/contact	https://www.mysite.de/kontakt

This works and is SEO friendly, but it loses the benefit of a Country-Code Top-Level Domain ( ccTLD ) which has an intrinsic locale

It's important to distinguish between language and location. Webflow is good at supporting language translation but it is not good at supporting locations. If you target a site at both the UK and the US, it's likely that most browsers in both locations will try to access /en even when you have /en-GB pages defined.

This is because auto-routing looks at the browser's language, but does not do GeoIP lookups to identify where the user is currently located.

Video Discussion

Goals

• Split a Webflow-localized site into discrete domains, one locale per domain, e.g. mysite.com ( EN ), mysite.fr ( French ), mysite.co.jp ( Japanese )

  • All page level content

  • All navigation

• Fully support SEO

  • Split and cross-reference sitemaps

  • Reflect alt hreflang URL changes

  • Redirect all original localization paths by 301, to the new sites to preserve SEO

  • Handle all internal linking, e.g. direct links to /fr/... should link to the appropriate site.

  • Support the locale switcher

• Support intentional content gaps, e.g. untranslated CMS items or static pages

• Maintain all centralized publishing, API support, integrations, CMS, etc as normal

Future

Not yet tested.

• Support Localization Pro's localized paths

Possible;

• Auto-routing. based on browser location & language

Notes

Locale-Specific Domains & Sub-Domains

https://discourse.webflow.com/t/seperate-domains-for-localisations/262898/4

Return requested pages for the specific requested locale /path/...

Modify alt lang href

Suppress irrelevant locale paths ( 404s )

• May be possible to redirect them to the alt ccTLD URL

Canonicals

Sitemap.xml

Links

e.g. /de/menu

Locale switcher modify alt page paths to other ccTLD sites

Path fixes

CMS paths are always

• Determine current locale, and whether it's an alt locale

Fix paths so that they are e.g. /blog and not /fr/blog on the domain.fr custom domain.

Language Link cross-references

Rel="alternate" Links

Adjust these to the domain per locale

Splitting Sitemaps by Locale

Research these;

It appears that for rel="alternate" links in the sitemap, you can reference a different domain legitimately;

<!-- Sitemap for example.com -->
<url>
  <loc>https://www.example.com/page1</loc>
  <xhtml:link 
     rel="alternate" 
     hreflang="fr" 
     href="https://www.example.fr/page1" />
</url>

<!-- Sitemap for example.fr -->
<url>
  <loc>https://www.example.fr/page1</loc>
  <xhtml:link 
     rel="alternate" 
     hreflang="en" 
     href="https://www.example.com/page1" />
</url>

Locale Switcher

Locale Map

FR -> domain.fr

EN -> domain.en

Other

Auto language detection and routing?

No, because domain already is locale-specific and will have locale-specific SEO.

Cookie to handle preferred locale?

SEO Notes

https://www.propellic.com/blog/how-to-choose-between-cctld-and-subfolders-for-international-seo

https://www.web.com/blog/what-is-cctld

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-hints-lowering-seo-value-of-country-code-top-level-domains/523183

https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/country-specific-domain-name

https://www.namecheap.com/blog/how-country-specific-domains-help-with-local-seo

Technical Notes

• Github repo: /sygnaltech/hf-loc-domains

NOT established as an HF2 micro-service, this worker currently runs independently.