Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
-
Hi Everyone,
This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites.
We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de.
On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below:
example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html
Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users?
Google guidelines say that this should be ok.
Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community!
Thanks,
Supriya.
-
Thank you so much Neil! That helps!!
-
As an SEO you're obliged to say translate all the folder names.
If you want to optimize your site for search engines, it is strongly recommended to use keywords in the Urls of the pages you'd like to see in the SERPs ; Its not compulsory, though, and with non-competitive terms you may get good rankings without it. A lot of sites have urls like mysite.com/index.php?page=123 and still rank well
A German site has German keywords obviously and you should have these words in your Url if you want an optimized site
If you're saying that technical reasons you can't do this, you'll have to make extra efforts elsewhere
Make sure that you have a fully translated breadcrumbs and navigation menus ... but if you can do this you shouldn't really be that far off translating the urls
- Neil
-
Hi Sameer,
Thanks for the reply! I am not worried about the content.
We needed some direction on URL rules. Translating entire folder structure in german is not feasible in phase 1 of this project hence we thought of translating just the last folder and filename in german. Actually the example link that I used in the original question does not display properly. Let me try again
example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html
-
I strongly suggest keeping the german url's on the german domain, too.
For usability and for seo purpose.
The Germans won't search for the english terms and text - so it is kind of useless, too.If you don't have the possibility to translate your whole website and you want to add those pages where you don't have any translation put at least a GERMAN url on the page. Then you can explain in short terms that this page is only existing in english language and refer them to the english dependant - or even put in the Google translation widget (but we all know that this is not a perfect translation at all, but better than nothing).
-
Hi there
I don't really see any usability nor seo reasons for using English keywords in your folders. Why not just translate it all into German? That is, in my opinion, the best long term strategy.
You are probably considering keeping the folders in English because it is easier. But it is a thing you'd probably want to change eventually. So although it is a hassle, you can aswell get it done
-
As long as you launch the site on a domain with proper local TLD (.de in your case) and add locally targeted content you should be ok. If possible try to host the website in the same country you are targeting.
Google has become much smarter in terms of detecting the geo local elements and it should serve the appropriate site on the SERP.
As far the mixing languages goes, it would not be a wise thing to do because it could impact usability. Is there a specific reason on why you are translating only a few pages in German? I could relate to an example where one of my customers mixed English with a local language on the local TLD website. The bounce rate went to the roof and users did not like it. They complained about this on the support chats and web forms. The issue was fixed and the bounce rate went down.
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
-
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Tags for Multi-Regional Website English Language Only having URL Parameters
Dear friends, We have a multi-regional website in English language only having the country selector on the top of each page and it adds countrycode parameters on each url. Website is built in Magento 1.8 and having 1 store with multiple store views. There is no default store set in Magento as I discussed with developer. Content is same for all the countries and only currency is changed. In navigation there are urls without url parameters but when we change store from any page it add parameters in the url for same page hence there are total 7 URLs. 6 URLs for each page (with country parameters) and 1 master url (without parameters) and making content duplicity. We have implemented hreflang tags on each page with url parameters but for canonical we have implemented master page url as per navigation without url parameters Example on this page. I think this is correct for master page but we should use URL parameters in canonical tags for each counry url too and there should be only 1 canonical tag on each country page url. Currently all the country urls are having master page canoncial tag as per the example. Please correct me if I am wrong and **in this case what has to be done for master page? **as google is indexing the pages without parameters too. We are also using GEOIP redirection for each store with country IP detection and for rest of the countries which are not listed on the website we are redirecting to USA store. Earlier it was 301 but we changed it to 302. Hreflang tags are showing errors in SEMRush due to redirection but in GWT it's OK for some pages it's showing no return tags only. Should I use **x-default tags for hreflang and country selector only on home page like this or should I remove the redirection? **However some of the website like this using redirection but header check tool doesn't show the redirection for this and for our website it shows 302 redirection. Sorry for the long post but looking for your support, please.
International SEO | | spjain810 -
International SEO & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags
Hi Everyone, I have a client that has two sites (example.com & example.co.uk) each have the same English content, but no hreflang or rel="canonical" tags in place. Would this be interpreted as duplicate content? They haven't changed the copy to speak to specific regions, but have tried targeting the UK with a ccTLD. I've taken a look at some other comparable question on MOZ like this post - > https://moz.com/community/q/international-hreflang-will-this-handle-duplicate-content where one of the answers says **"If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary." **If hreflang tags are not necessary, then would I need rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content? Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow SEO out.
International SEO | | ccox10 -
Local Address for International Business?
Our client's business www.shanore.com is based in Ireland but targets international markets, particularly the USA. A few months ago we made the switch to HTTPS and ever since our organic traffic has steadily declined in the USA, UK, Canada etc. by roughly 30 - 40%. In Ireland, over the same period of time it's increased by around 30%. An Irish address features in the Footer and the same address is also given on Google + / Google My Business. Webmaster Tools is set to target the USA & the site is hosted in the USA. Could the presence of the Irish address somehow be overriding the Webmaster Tools geo-targeting? Why would traffic fall everywhere else apart from Ireland? Keyword rankings are also now stronger in Ireland than in other countries.
International SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Any Idea for International SEO in this complex situation?
Hi,
International SEO | | teconsite
a client of mine has a site with a domain name brand.es. They are a furniture manufacturer. They has a well known brand in its sector.
brand.com is registered by a US company. (Completly different activity) This client registered its domain name 10 years ago, and its audience was in Spain.
As it is a .es ccTLD it is directly geotargeted to Spain. 5 years ago, they began to export to other countries, and today they have distributors in a lot of countries like Italy, France, England, Portugal, Germany, and many more... As they are manufacturers and they sell their products to multiple locations worldwide, the language aproach seems to be the more efficient way to reach they users. The problem is that they are using a ccTLD domain brand.es, beacuse the .com domain was registered.
Actually the international organic traffic is very poor, mostly related to queries with the brand name. My question:
Is it possible to do international seo with a geotargeted domain .es?
Should they register a .com that doesn't match exactly their brand name? (it is a little difficult, beacause brandfurniture.com would be good for England, but not for Spain or France. )
Or should they focus their strategy with some ccTLDs for 3 or 4 of the main countries? (Not sure this would be an alternative... too much cost) I know, that in this situation there is no perfect solution, but I would appreciate your opinions.
Any Ideas ?????? Thank you!!0 -
Queston about subdomains for SEO Gurus
What is the best way to deal with a blog acting as subdomain (blog.domain.com) when you have 3 regional website versions (uk.domain.com, us.domain.com, and fr.domain.com)? I am facing a big problem for proper distribution of link juice to the three main websites. The point is that I have one blog, in which I have general content not targeting any specific market, but the link juice cannot be distributed properly across three websites, because I have a script to determine visitor’s region and serve him the right regional website. It uses a geoip script for Apache to redirect a visitor to their proper subdomain by determining which continent they are connecting from based off their IP address. Apache can use any type of redirect for this purpose, but we're using 302 to maintain user experience without using a 301 which might permanently redirect a crawler to only one version of the website. That cannot be done without 302 redirect, which means sending no link juice from the blog subdomain to the main websites. So, when you click on the logo from blog.domian.com, the script determines visitor region, and then 302 to the proper website. I don’t have main domain like www.domain.com. Instead the script is acting on this domain so that it 302 redirects to regional website according user location. The situation is complicated because you can’t send equal link juice to 3 regional website, having only one general blog. Even worse, none of the regional websites receives link juice from neither individual posts, nor blog.domain.com because of the 302 redirect. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | darmar0 -
Same domain with different google effect seo ?
I have a domain www.abc.com for US market. Now i want to sell same services in Australia. I am thinking to buy www.abc.com.au . Because i think i will get rank more faster for .au in Australia because of .au . What do you guys suggest ?
International SEO | | afycon0 -
Global SEO - How quickly/aggressively should one expand into multiple countries?
SITUATION: Our client is a global company lacking the global presence, so naturally the idea is performing international/global SEO in each country. For benchmarking purposes, our plan is to focus on a select number of keywords (ie 8-15) for each country and begin link building within each respective country. All SEO effort (ie. link building) will be for sub-folders (ie. www.client.com/subfolder/) on the same top level domain. Note, each country may have multiple languages, so each language will be broken out as it's own unique SEO campaign with it's very own strategy and link building efforts. For example: Mexico has 2 languages (English & Spanish) and will be considered 2 separate campaigns. PROBLEM: The client wants to be extremely aggressive and perform SEO on 3 new countries every month. This amounts to 36 new countries/SEO campaigns per year. Assuming each country has 2 languages each, we are looking at 6 SEO campaigns per month, or 72 per year. Our concern is that since all SEO effort will be performed on the same top level domain, we may be growing too fast and the search engines may consider the addition of these new pages and links to be too 'spammy'. We'd love to hear some feedback or personal experience on what might be considered a "safe" or "healthy" expansion into different countries. Thanks!
International SEO | | ByteLaunch0 -
Internationalization and SEO
Hi Everyone, This is my first post in this new Q & A section!! This interface looks great!! Now onto the question.... We have www.example.com in English that has 50,000+ URLs. We are in the process of building a new site example.de targeting German users. The German site (www.example.de) will be a mirror of the English site at launch as we want to give a full experience to people visiting the .de domain. However, not all pages will be localized as we can't support that. We are planning on localizing the core sets of pages (~500) and leaving the rest in English. Post launch, we will have additional milestones to localize the remaining pages until the entire site is localized (converted to German). Is this the correct way to go? Will this cause duplicate content issue?
International SEO | | Amjath
Will adding "rel=canonical" tag on these pages solve the purpose? Thanks for the help!0