Multilingual Structure
-
Hello fellow SEO fans, I've got a setup that I'm interested in some opinions on.
I have a website which has the following setup:
www.site.com (english version of the site)
www.site.com/nl (dutch version of the site)
Now, my experience tells me the dutch version would be written in dutch (not using Google Translate) and the meta data et al should also be in dutch. But my question is:
If somebody in, say, Netherlands perform a search in english for a specific keyword, we would want the www.site.com page to appear in the SERPs, not the www.site.com/nl page, because the person has searched in english. However, because there's a www.site.com/nl page, purely the /nl page will be optimized and linked to in order to rank it higher in the SERPs for dutch searches and not english searches? But if that's the case, then the person in the Netherlands searching for the english version of the keyword, probably won't see www.site.com in the ranks because of targeting and keyword distribution?
Bit of a tricky situation that I've been pondering over and can't quite put the nail on the head.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
-
@Gianluca - Thank you very much for stepping in here, I know you're a busy man so this is appreciated. What you've suggested is definitely an option and I'll investigate that approach when I'm back in the office. Thank you kindly.
-
In your case I would use the hreflang mark up like this:
That way you are saying to Google that whenever a search is realized in English (and independently of the country, because the code used is just the ISO language code), it must present the English home page URL.
Vice versa, if a search is done in flemish (independently of the location), it must present the Flemish home page.
This should be repeated for all the pages of the site.
-
Oh I'm sorry to hear there are problems already.
I thought that you are worrying about some possible problems in the future.
Maybe it's not very clear what the current problems are, mate, and maybe that's the reason there are no more answers with more specific information. Maybe you should be more specific about the current problems and not only about the ones which might or might not happen.
Cheers and still be happy, life is more than this.
-
Unfortunately over thinking is a requirement here because the site's not ranking as it should be, and I cannot just be happy until I've made a plan unfortunately.
I appreciate your response mate, I just need someone a little more technical to assist me.
-
Don't worry that much!
Just do it as you intend and be happy!
- if the english page is with english content and english (context & anchor) backlinks it will rank for english terms
- and same for the dutch page - there is no way 100% dutch (as content and backlinks) page to rank for english search terms.
My 2 cents.
Cheers
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
-
How Shold I Structure URLs for a Portfolio?
Hi Moz Community, My web design agency has a lot of different projects we showcase in the portfolio of our site, but I'm having trouble finding information on the best practices for how to structure the URLs for all of those portfolio pages. We have tons of projects that we've done in the same service category and even multiple projects we've done for the same company within that category. For example, right now things look like: www.rootdomain.com/portfolio/web-design/clientname which tends to get long, bulky and awkward, considering we do lots of projects in the web design category and might do a second project for the same company. How should we differentiate the projects from a URL standpoint to avoid having all of the pages compete for the same keyword? Does it even matter, given that these portfolio showcases are primarily image-based anyways?
Technical SEO | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Structured Data Mark Up Helper 404?
Whenever I put our URL into markup helper, it returns not found 404.
Technical SEO | | RayflexGroup
I've tried this for different pages, different categories and it all returns the same "not found 404" - I did also trial other websites to see if it was an issue with the markup helper but everything returned fine.
Has anyone else had this issue or know how to resolve?0 -
Recipe Wordpress Plugin - Structured Data?
We have been using this plugin for years: https://wordpress.org/plugins/ziplist-recipe-plugin/ and it appears that it's causing us serious problems in Google. So we're looking for either a new plugin or possible directions on if we should custom build an option into our site. Ultimately we're looking for the best setup for the Recipes on our site to obtain a Featured Snippet. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | FabulesslyFrugal0 -
Structured Data Markup Helper in Webmasters
Structured Data Markup Helper in Webmasters. Once i set the article or Movies with star rating etc should i replace the whole code from here into my page? is there some other way?
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Structuring URL's for better SEO
Hello, We were rolling our fresh urls for our new service website. Currently we have our structure as www.practo.com/health/dental/clinic/bangalore We like to have it as www.practo.com/health/dental-clinic-bangalore Can someone advice us better which one of the above structure would work out better and why? Should this be a focus of attention while going ahead since this is like a search engine platform for patients looking out for actual doctors. Thanks, Aditya
Technical SEO | | shanky10 -
Our UE team has presented me with a site structure where the content (folders) does not match the hierarchical directory structure (in the CME)
Our UE team has presented me with a new site structure where the content (folders) does not match the hierarchical directory structure (in the CME). I.E Sub-sectors, sectors and product pages are ALL just 1 directory off the root. example.com/sector example.com/sub-sector example.com/productpage FYI 'normal' folder hierarchy would be; example.com/sector/ example.com/sector/sub-sector example.com/sector/sub-sector/productpage I cannot find any SEO disadvantages re; crawl, if anything the SE's will crawl more efficeitly with clearly less depth... higher 'deep content', and a better nav - which is technically a sound solution with link consistency throughout - 1 to 2 clicks to all pages. Only disadvantage might be a user confusion... which can be off-set with contextual breadcrumbs. Are there any PURE SEO disadvantages to a structure this illogical? Note - This does not abuse any Search Engine guidelines. Thanks for reading, Rich
Technical SEO | | richcowley0 -
Proper structure for site with multiple catagories of same products
Hi, we have products (trophies and awards) that can be catagorized in many ways. Using Award Medals as an example: - Medals by type: 1 1/2", 2", etc. - Medals by sport Baseball, Basketball, Cheer - Medals by Style Color, Gold, Silver, Bronze Right now, we have an Award Medals section off of our home page. The section has a decent page rank, but should be much better (I think). My guess is that we are loosing page range since we have separate sections with the groups above as we want our customers to be able to find the medals easily. Unfortunately, when we setup our site 10 years ago, we organized by type and this is what is hanging off the home page. The other groupings we added more recently. I have attached a snap shot of what the sections look like. We would like customers to find an individual medal when they do a Google search. For example a search for Baseball Medals. In Goggle, they likely would not search for 1 1/2" medals. My question is this: Can we keep the same structure we have today (to enable customer flexibility) but improve page rank and also have the sections like basball medals rank well? I have thought about using canonical tags, but the pages are not the same - in one case it is all baseball medals, in another it is all 1 1/2" medals, etc. Thanks for your help!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0