Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best practice for URL - Language/country
-
Hi,
We are planning on having our website localized into more languages. We already have an English and German version. The German version is currently a sub-domain:
www.example.com --> English version
de.example.com --> German version
Is this recommended? Or is it always better to have URLs with language prefixes such a:
Which is a better practice in terms of SEO?
-
Hi Peter,
Both really good answers to your questions above but maybe it would be good to give you some further pointing in the right direction. Perhaps you could answer the questions below and I can give you my personal opinion on which method would be best:
-
will you be putting an equal amount of marketing (content, PR, etc.) into the Spanish version for example compared with English?
-
are you able to offer fully localised service eg, Spanish customer service, Spanish sales team etc.?
-
is your company well-known globally?
It's important not to also forget that another option is using ccTLDs (eg, .co.uk, .com.au). These give the highest signal to search engines about the country being targeted and also importantly make you look more "local" which can do wonders for increasing conversion rate in countries where your company is not well-known.
-
-
I think that Tom gave you one of the best answers possible.
However I hope this helps your site structure should be very similar to one contained in the two URL's
If I may add a little bit of information that I thought was helpful
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/hreflang-101-how-to-avoid-international-duplication/
WHERE TO ADD YOUR HREFLANG TAGS
You can add hreflang tags to your sitemaps, in the HTTP response headers, or on the page itself.
IN YOUR SITEMAPS
The best place to add hreflang is in your sitemap as including them in the headers or on the page adds weight to every single page request.
The following example will inform Google about the English version from the German version of the website:
<url> <loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc></url>
<xhtml:link< span=""> rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://www.example.com/english/” /> <xhtml:link < span="">rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”http://www.example.com/deutsch/” /></xhtml:link <></xhtml:link<>
This method would need to be repeated in full for every page on the site and for all the international websites.
IN YOUR HEADERS AND HTML
Hreflang tags can also be added to the HTTP header:
Link: http://www.example.com/english/; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”en” Link: http://www.example.com/deutsch/; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”de”
Or in the tag in the HTML:
http://www.example.com/english/” /> http://www.example.com/deutsch/
& because you will be creating a new site
https://www.candidsky.com/blog/the-seo-2015-guide-to-website-migration/
it would come down to your backlink profile if it were me I would use
Moz open site Explorer, Majestic, Ahrefs and Google Webmaster tools to determine whether or not I will be receiving a enough Backlinks for a subdomain or separate TLD otherwise I would use a subfolder and an extremely fast method of hosting the site Fastly is excellent or many other great methods as well.
Hope this helps,
Tom
PS use
http://hreflang.ninja/ to check
-
Hi Peter
Both are viable options.
I'd highly recommend going through Aleyda Solis' international SEO posts here on the Moz blog. They can teach how to prepare for international SEO, how to approach site structure and how to generate relevant code and hreflang tags.
Here is her international SEO checklist
Here is her Hreflang blog post and generator tool
And 40 tools to help advance your international SEO
They're great reading and nothing that I'd be able to do add to, so I hope this helps!
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
-
Topic Cluster: URL Best Practices
I'm trying to be mature and employ the Topic Cluster strategy to my content. In doing so I realized there are a few URL options. Some more difficult to execute than others. -Is it important to call out the Pillar Topic in your subtopic URL?
Technical SEO | | dkellyagile
-Does the Pillar Topic need to have its own landing page? (As opposed to just being part of the blog.) Here's an Example: My Pillar is: Inbound vs. Outbound
My subtopic is: Marketing Platforms Here are the URL options I can think of... Option 1: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-marketing-platforms/ Option 2: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/which-marketing-platforms/ Option 3: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/marketing-platforms-inbound-vs-outbound/ Option 4 (Hardest): https://pipelineinbound.com/inbound-vs-outbound/marketing-platforms/ Are there some fundamental best practices for URL structure and Link Building as it pertains to Topic Clusters? Thanks!0 -
Best way to change URL for already ranking pages
Hello. I have a lot of pages that I'm optimising. The ones I'm focusing on right now is already ranking, but the URLs could be better (they don't include the keywords right now). However I'm worried that if I change the URLs they will drop in rankings or have to start over. I would of course set up 301 redirect, but is there more I need to do? What is the best way to change URL for already ranking pages?
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?
Reviewing our client's URLs for a 301 redirect strategy, we have noticed that many URLs have "/index.shtml." The part we don'd understand is these URLs aren't the homepage and they have multiple folders followed by "/index.shtml" Does anyone happen to know why this may be occurring? Is there any SEO value in keeping the "/index.shtml" in the URL?
Technical SEO | | FranFerrara0 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Double Slash // in URL
My client is using double forward slahes in URL like this "//" is this affecting SEO?
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
Found a Typo in URL, what's the best practice to fix it?
Wordpress 3.4, Yoast, Multisite The URL is supposed to be "www.myexample.com/great-site" but I just found that it's "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" It is a relatively new site but we already pointed several internal links to "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" What's the best practice to correct this? Which option is more desirable? 1.Creating a new page I found that Yoast has "301 redirect" option in the Advanced tap Can I just create a new page(exact same page) and put noindex, nofollow and redirect it to http://www.myexample.com/great-site OR 2. htacess redirect rule simply change the URL to http://www.myexample.com/great-site and update it, and add Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | joony2008
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.myexample.com/gre-atsite$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myexample.com/great-site$1 [R=301,L]0 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | | Vivamedia0 -
Merging several sites into one - best practice
I had 2 sites on the web (www.physicseditor.de, www.texutrepacker.com) and decided to move them all under one single domain (www.codeandweb.com) Both sites were ranking very good for several keywords. I not redirected the most important pages from the old domains with a 301 redirect to the new subpages (www.texturepacker.com => www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker) Google still delivers the old domains but the redirect take people directly to the new content. I've already submitted the new site map to google webmaster tools. Pages are already in the index but do not really show up in the search results. How long does it take until google accepts the new domain and delivers the new content in the search results? Was it ok what I did? Or is there some room for improvement? SeoMoz will of course not find any information about the new page since it is not yet directly linked in google. But I can't get ranking information for the "old" pages since SeoMoz tells me that it can't crawl the old domains....
Technical SEO | | gossi740