How many languages do we plan to have?
What types of URLs?
How many?
In any case, both solutions are good as they provide a structure that is easier to build and develop as your site and business grows and changes.
Its flexibility makes it the best solution if you don't want to sign up for a language yet (for example because you don't have the resources to do so) but you do trust in doing so in the medium term.
Setting up a subfolder structure allows you to use the same structure for any future ccTLDs or subdomains for country sections in the future.
Additionally, the development team will appreciate this option because it is also scalable to implement hreflang tags (especially if we have a folder with the language initials)
Parameters allow for a backup system in case tagging fails on a future site update.
Parameters can be defined in Google as used to modify the language code phone number philippines of the page.
If your other tags are missing, those parameter settings still tell Google that the content is being translated.
Using a language parameter is also the most scalable system, as it doesn't even require translating the URL names and is easy to tag.
Therein lies the main drawback: URLs are often not translated, resulting in unfriendly URLs that could also be accidentally overridden by a rel canonical tag.
rst option if we decide on a multi-language focus.
The fact that this solution allows you to configure geotargeting in Search Console or even allows you to have different servers for each country, rather than being an advantage, shows that this is a solution not suitable for a multi-language strategy, but rather for a multi-country approach, with all the same costs of having a ccTLD.
In short, it is an acceptable solution if we want to have a multi-country strategy (although it is better to have a multi-domain strategy) but not valid for a multi-language strategy.
I have included it in this section because subdomains are often used in this way, but it is not recommended.
How to choose the best international SEO strategy for a startup?
A very common mistake is to start with a ccTLD based on the country's initial market: for example, I am a startup from Spain and I start my project with a .es domain.
In this way, for my internationalization I will be almost forced to use a large number of ccTLDs, depending on the countries in which I want to sell my products/services.