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
-
Country and Language Specific URL Paths
Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?
International SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
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 -
Weird Geo Rankings - Help Please!
So I've got a site - a .com, hosted in the USA with no geo target set in webmaster tools. I'm from the UK where the site ranks no 6 for its main keyword but in the USA it's ranking no 38. That's pretty much it! I can't get my head around why this would be - the US market is the main market for the product/service so I am thinking maybe it's just more competitive but surely many of the sites ranking in the States would be in the UK too. .... it's such a difference in rank! PS, the site was no 14 in google.com until penguin 2.0 but dropped although its .co.uk ranking has remained - another thing that has left me dumb founded! The website is www.options-trading.com and the keyword is "options trading". Any ideas?!
International SEO | | marcus810 -
Translating URLs worth it?
My company has content in 23 different languages in 30+ countries. We translate page content but we don't translate URLs. I am trying to figure out whether it would be worth the considerable extra overhead to translate the URLs as well. I'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts of the Moz community. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | Logi0 -
Should I include language specific characters in the URL?
So a client's site is to be set up like this: domain.com
International SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey
domain.co.uk
domain.de
domain.fr
domain.pl The question is, on the non english language sites, which would be more likely to rank? domain.de/über or domain.de/ueber Thanks!0 -
SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English. The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's. Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ? As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca
International SEO | | vanvallejo0 -
Does IP filtering have a negative impact on SEO?
If a large site has multiple regions (Australia, USA, UK, France), how will IP filtering to a particular area affect SEO. e.g: Ilive in the UK an if I visit the said website I would automatically be redirected to the UK subfolder of the site whereas somebody searching in Australia would be redirected to the AUS folder. Will there be any detrimental affect on SEO and will the search engines still be able to crawl the entire site no matter which data centre is being used?
International SEO | | White.net0 -
The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
We are currently working on a project which involves 3 separate .com domains in relation to a UK company selling/renting residential, commercial and investment properties within the UK. We are now working on producing a .hk site for the overseas customers. Can anyone advise what the best practice is for a .hk domain and where best to start? Should the domain be hosted in that geographical location for example? We are relatively new to this so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | SoundinTheory0