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Folder, subdomain, or your own domain: where your English version lives

You'll leave knowing whether your English-language site belongs in a folder, a subdomain, or a new domain, and why a folder is the default choice for almost everyone.

By Yodai · Published September 6, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026

If your business needs an English version, there's a decision to make before you write a single page. What nobody explains is where that version lives: inside your own site, at yoursite.com/en/, in a separate house hanging off the same address, en.yoursite.com, or by buying a whole new domain, yoursite.co.uk. Any developer will give you a different answer, and all three options really do work: Google covers them in its guide to multi-regional and multilingual sites, each with its own pros and cons. None of them is a trap. That said, all of this assumes your site already has its own domain, like yoursite.com: if it lives on an address that hangs off another company's domain, you can't open subdomains for it, and which of its pages Google keeps depends on how that company has things set up.

The problem isn't which option looks more elegant. The problem is which one you'll still be able to keep up in six months, once the thrill of breaking into a new market has worn off and all that's left is the work of running two sites instead of one. Switching later costs you: it's a full move, every old address has to redirect to the new one, and according to Google's guide on site moves, your rankings can fluctuate in the meantime, and for a small or medium site, it can take several weeks before Google processes the change for most of your pages.

This decision usually gets made by whoever builds your site, in a single afternoon, without ever asking how much time you'll be able to put into it a year from now. And then it sticks: nobody looks at it again until something breaks, an English-speaking customer emails the wrong address, or the subdomain sits untouched for months with prices and hours that aren't yours anymore. Better to decide it yourself now, on purpose, than to inherit it without noticing.

The three ways to store the English version

A folder means putting the English version inside your own site, at a path like /en/. Same domain, same certificate, same dashboard, same hosting bill: Google describes it as easy to set up and low-maintenance, since it runs on the same server. And it's still your same site, with all the years yoursite.com has behind it and the links already pointing to it, not a brand-new one.

A subdomain is en.yoursite.com: technically a separate house hanging off the same address. It needs its own entry in your domain settings, and your security certificate has to cover that name too (according to Let's Encrypt's FAQ, one certificate can cover several names), though it can still share the same hosting. For Google, choosing between a subdomain and a folder isn't really the important part: its SEO starter guide lists it among the things you don't need to obsess over, and it tells you to do whatever fits your business best; it notes that organizing by folders can be easier to manage, though sometimes it makes sense to split topics into subdomains. The real advantage has nothing to do with Google: it's that someone else can run that subdomain, writing, updating, publishing, without touching a single file on your Spanish site.

Your own domain means buying yoursite.co.uk and building a whole new site there. It's a separate site, with nothing inherited: as Google explains, an established site has earned its ranking signals mostly through its own content, and a separate site doesn't have any of that. It starts with no links and no history behind your original site. In exchange, it's entirely yours in that market: according to Google, a country-code domain makes it clear which country you're targeting, though it only works for that one country, and it's easy to keep separate from everything else. You can list prices in pounds, a local phone number, a local legal notice, and nothing that happens on your Spanish site affects it. Watch the ending: it has to be a country code, like .uk; regional ones, like .eu, Google treats as generic, just like a .com. And you pay for it separately: Google warns that these domains are expensive and need more infrastructure, plus the hosting if you're not sharing it and the time of whoever maintains it.

The right question isn't which one sounds more professional

It's tempting to think a domain of your own looks more impressive, that yoursite.co.uk sounds like a real company while a folder sounds like a shortcut. It's almost always the other way around. A standalone domain nobody updates looks worse than a simple folder that's still there, working. Google doesn't reward ambition in a domain: according to that same SEO guide, the ending only matters if you're targeting users in a specific country, and even then it usually carries little weight; what matters most is creating content that's actually useful to the people reading it.

How big your business really is matters more than how ambitious you feel. If you're self-employed or running the site with just one or two people, with nobody dedicated to the overseas market, a folder isn't the cheap option: it's the only one you'll be able to keep up without the neglect showing. If someone's already writing, answering, and publishing in English every week, the subdomain starts to earn its place. And if there's a real office, an employee, or a separate legal entity operating in another country behind it, a domain of your own stops being a vanity purchase and becomes the right call.

One question usually settles it: how often are you going to publish something new in English? If you're not going to write in English regularly, go with the folder and don't overthink it. If there's really going to be someone, you or whoever you hire, writing in English every week for an audience that follows that site closely, the subdomain starts to pay off for the extra work of keeping it separate.

A domain of your own asks for even more: it asks for a genuinely different business behind it, not just a different language. Prices in another currency, hours for another country, someone who answers the phone in that language. If the only thing that changes is the language, buying a new domain is paying for a house you'll barely visit.

With the folder or subdomain chosen, you already know where your English site lives. What's left is telling Google that it's the same page translated, so it shows each person the version in their language, and that's next.