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I currently have a single website that serves the same content, but in different languages on different domains.

i.e. at the .de domain I have the german translation of the site and on the .fr domain I have the french translation.

In general this is fine, but it does cause some issues. For example I cannot be authenticated towards multiple languages (without having to add an over-complicated auth service like oidc).

So I have been thinking about moving everything to the .com domain, with redirects from the others to ex .com/de/ and .com/fr/. But what I am worried about is how this will affect SEO? Should I be worried about my ranking after doing this? even though I keep all the non .com domains and add a 301 Moved Permanently code to the new place.

also curious about if this could even help my SEO ranking? I would assume that it is clearer for ex googlebot to see that under the same domain there is the "same" content with different languages

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="https://example.com/de/foo" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="https://example.com/fr/foo" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.com/" />
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You could do the move to one domain. That would not be a problem.

But depending on the size of the website it could take some time for google to understand all those changes. So there will definitely be dips for a few weeks in the rankings!!

Use a Tool like Screaming frog to prepare a lot of 301 redirects from old to new URLs and keep all the old domains for ever and ever (since the redirect are on those domains). Otherwise you would loose all backlinks.

Be sure to check Google Search Console before and after to keep track of things you might have forgotten.

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Moving all languages to a single .com with subfolders (/de/ and /fr/) and using 301 redirects is a solid SEO move. It helps Google understand the site better and keeps your rankings safe. Just make sure hreflang tags are set correctly for each language, which usually improves SEO clarity without hurting rankings.

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