Using addon domain name for multilingual website

Question

I want to have translated versions of my website to serve certain countries. I want to use different, dedicated domain names, like:

• www.mywebsite.example (main domain)
• www.monsiteweb.fr (new)
• www.misitioweb.es (new)

I want all the new domains to point to the root folder of the main domain's hosting, so that it loads the exact same index.php file. In that file, I check on which domain name the user is, and depending on that, I fetch the correct language from the database. This makes it easy to maintain: I use the exact same .php files for every domain name but just load in a different language. I will use a hreflang tag on all pages.

My question is: how do I set up the new domain names? Can I just set them up as addon domains? Because I want all my domain names to be indexed by Google of course. Or does Google ignore addons or something?

In short: is the setup described above a proper way to do it? An alternative way would be that I just buy hosting for the new domains as well, and I copy everything, including the databases... would this be better from a SEO perspective, or is what I had planned equally good?

Answer 1

If your hosting provider allows mapping more than one domain in your account then the only thing you need to do is:

1. Create a virtual host per domain.
2. Point each of them into the same web root directory.

You need to clarify what you mean by "add-on domains". I suspect this is your hosting provider's nomenclature, so it would be useful to know what hosting provider it is.

However, if what you mean is "Do I need to have a separate hosting plan for each of my domains?" then the answer depends on your current hosting plan and it's capability to map multiple domains. You might be better off asking this question to their support staff.