Multi regional + multi lingual URLs
-
We have made the decision to start using a new ecommerce platform, which means we will have to migrate our existing webshops. Some of our new customers will be launched on the new platform straight away. Some limitations we used to have when it comes to URL structure have mostly been lifted, so I've been thinking what the perfect URL would be in terms of SEO.
Since we mostly work for pan European customers, the multi regional and multi lingual aspect is a very important one, as it's important to rank well in all countries. I've always figured that even though it would be good to integrate country into the URL somehow to indicate to the engines that this content is meant for a certain country (either by using local TLDs or indicating using Webmaster Tools that a certain subdirectory or subdomain is targeting a country specifically), there are multiple countries with the same language (for instance, they speak French in France but also in Belgium), which could cause duplicate content issues:
www.webshop.com/be/fr/french-product-name
www.webshop.com/fr/fr/french-product-nameI guess it won't matter much whether you use fr.webshop.com, www.webshop.com/fr or www.webshop.fr, it's mostly the decision IF you want to include country somehow. What do you all think, is this important? Or is the multi lingual component enough for pages to rank well in several countries? For instance, if we were to use the language component only:
www.webshop.com/fr/french-product-name
Would this have the potential to rank well in both the French speaking part of Belgium, as well as France?
Michel
-
Thanks Oleg and Irving!
There are only very minor differences between the countries that speak the same languages. Sometimes there will be price differences, though not always, and we use callcenters that have different phone numbers for different countries. That's all though, and so that's not much.
So, we don't need the country in the URL. We would be able to determine country by using Geo IP and preselect that. I guess the most important question for is, if there's any reason you think we should include the country in the URL anyway?
-
Folders with language/regions are the better way to go, put it all under one .COM site, easier to maintain.
If you need both /be/fr/ and fr/fr/ sections on your site then i would advise you to rewrite the content in one of those sections to make it unique. Use country and language meta tags, include different addresses and other signals indicating region.
-
If there are absolutely no differences at all between Belgium and France French, then I would just go with the language in the url (/fr/).
However, if there are pricing/location/banner/any differences between the two pages, I would split them up (/be-fr/ and /fr-fr/ - having both variables in one 'folder' be better than additional another subfolder).
"www.webshop.com/fr/french-product-name Would this have the potential to rank well in both the French speaking part of Belgium, as well as France?"
Yes
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will hreflang with a language and region allow Google to show the page to all users of that language regardless of region?
I'm launching translations on a website with the first translation being Brazilian Portuguese. If I use the following hreflang: If a user is outside of Brazil and has their browser language set to just Portuguese (Not Portuguese (Brazil)) will Google still serve them the Portuguese version of my pages in search results?
International SEO | | Brando160 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
Multilingual website - Url problem (sitemap)
At this moment our website both uses the language in the url like "en" and localizes the url itself ("books" in english and "boeken" in dutch). Because of the history of making our website multilingual we have a system that takes the browser language for the localization if the url doesn't contain a language like "en". This means: www.test.com/books = browser language www.test.com/en/books = english language www.test.com/boeken = browser language www.test.com/nl/boeken = dutch language Now for the sitemap this makes it a little troublesome for me because which hreflang is used for which url? 1) The first thing I thought of was using x-default for all urls that get the language of the browser. <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But as you can see we now got 2 times x-default. 2) Another solution I thought of was just use the localization of the url to determine the language like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But now we got 2 of each language for the same page. 3) The last solution I thought of was removing links without a language in the url (except for the homepage, which will still have an x-default) like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.comen/books</loc></url></code> But for this solution I need to put 301's at pages that are "deleted" and also need to change the system to 301 to the right page. Although the last point isn't really a problem I'm kind of worried that I will lose some of the "seo points" with a 301. (When we changed our domain in the past we had a bad experience with the 301 of our old domain) What do you think would be the best solution for SEO? Or do you have any other suggestions or solutions I haven't thought of.
International SEO | | Anycoin0 -
Multi-Country Hosting
Hi all
International SEO | | yousayjump
I have read a few post that are similar to mine on this forum but still wanted to ask my specific question. We have a .com domain hosted on a dedicated server in the UK for our main website which takes online bookings and payments. We have purchased the following TLD's of our domain name:
.it, .es, .ch, .fr, .es, .at We essentially want to create a satellite site on each domain where the idea is that users in those countries will find our satellite sites via organic search engine results when searching for the information we sell. Due to the nature of our infrastructure, each satellite site will connect to the mysql database on the UK site to drawn down its text content. This is where the main CMS is located. I understand the following are important from an SEO point of view for our satellite sites: Hosting in the country we wish to target
Geographical targeting via WMT
Local addresses and telephone numbers on the site
Correct lang=" " tag in the source code
Content presented in the correct language (goes without saying really) Can you advise on any other considerations? Many Thanks Kris0 -
Should product-pages with different currencies have different URLs?
Here is a question that should be of interest for small online merchants selling internationally in multiple currencies. When, based on geolocation, a product-page is served with different currencies, should a product-page have a different URL for each currency? Thanks.
International SEO | | AdrienOLeary0 -
Multi Language / target market site
What is the best way to deal with multiple languages and multiple target markets? Is it better to use directories or sub-domains: English.domain.com Portuguese.domain.com Or Domain.com Domain.com/Portuguese Also should I use language meta tags to help the different language versions rank in different geographic areas e.g. Are there any examples of where this has been done well?
International SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
Best URL for international domain
Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world. We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com for USA, www.wyz.com/jp for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp for customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
International SEO | | FXDD
www.xyz.com/int-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?0 -
De-Indexing URLs from a specific Locale
Is it possible to de-index a specific URL from showing up in a specific locale? For example, if I want to de-index http://www.example.com/category/product1 from http://www.google.co.uk but not http://www.google.com, is that possible?
International SEO | | craigsmith3330