Splitting Locales by ccTLD

Webflow Localization does not currently support locale-specific domains.

For example, if you have a site localized in English and French, there's no in-built way to have;

• mysite.com display only your English-language content
• mysite.fr display only your French-language content

You can assign both domain, but both would display exactly the same content, and have the same language-switcher, and the same defaulting behavior.

Moreover, Webflow hosting does not effectively support multiple domains on a single site; one needs to be setup as the "default domain" and all others will be redirected to it.

Why split on ccTLD?

There are ostensibly two advantages to splitting your site's languages by domain name;

• Some improvement in local SEO, since Google will prioritize e.g. .fr domains in searches performed within France.
• User trust. For example, French users seeing .fr in search results may consider those sites more relevant to them than e.g. a .com

Is it worth it?

Generally, the locale-specific paths are enough because Google's language targeting is stronger than its location+ccTLD targeting, but ideally you'd want both.

‍https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-ranking-preference/522477/

How can you split on ccTLD?

There are two possible approaches you can take with Webflow Localization;

Complete split

You'd need a reverse proxy per TLD to;

• Split the content so that each TLD shows its locale only
• Normalize the paths and links throughout your site
• Correct alt hreflang links
• Correct the sitemap

It's not horrific but it's a good deal of infrastructure to build and monitor.

Redirect-only

If you want an “cheap” way to do this, you can keep the sites combined, and then setup redirects on the alt domains externally,. e.g.-

https://mysite.fr/* redirects to-
https://mysite.com/fr/*

You should be able to do that using an external redirect service like Cloudflare’s redirects or transform rules.

The advantage here is primarily in printed materials where your domain name is visible. There is likely no SEO benefit here since those .fr domains will resolve to .com and be presented as such by Google SERPS.

Notes

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-explains-geotargeting-via-url-subdirectories/439266/

‍