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.
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
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to SERPs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
International SEO | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Goal
We want local domains (be, ch, fr, etc.) to appear in SERPs and also comply with Google policy of local language variants and/or canonical links. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Issue
After Googlebot crawled the websites we see lot of “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Coverage/Excluded report (Google Search Console) for most domains. When we inspect some of those URLs we can see Google has decided that canonical URL points to (example): User-declared canonical: None
Google-selected canonical: …same page, but on a different domain Strange is that even those URLs are on Google and can be found in SERPs. Obviously Google doesn’t know what to make of it. We noticed many websites in the same scenario use a self-referencing approach which is not really “kosher” - we are afraid if we use the same approach we can get penalized by Google. Question: What do you suggest to fix the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in our scenario? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
International SEO - how likely is it autoredirect via IP Address will impact rankings?
Hello, We're looking to internationalise our site so that US visitors will see the US branded version while everyone else will see the global version (currently at .com). This question specifically is about location-based auto-redirects. The literature I've read (including Google) recommends against auto-redirection: "Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site." Insofar as I understand it the theory goes as follows. Google crawls mainly from the US Auto-redirecting by US IP to the US domain will also redirect the Googlebot crawlers Because of this the crawlers will only see the US site / domain and not original .com website Crawlers can't index what they can't see Drop in rankings for the original site However, one of my colleagues has pointed out to me a company which does use auto-redirects. If a user is in the UK and type in their website they will be redirected to the UK version of the site, US will be US etc. I have checked their rankings and they are still ranking highly for relevant terms. I have been asked why they have been able to do this without impacting their visibility. Any ideas? Given their success have the risks of auto-redirecting have been overstated? How can we ensure US visitors land on the correct internationalised domain without auto-redirects in place? Looking forward to your thoughts on this as well as your experiences. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
How to Localise per Region (Europe, America, APAC, EMEI) and not per country as best SEO practise?
Hi SEO expertises! I am currently working with a client that initially have an English website targeting UK users but want to expand their market into four new regions (Europe, America, APAC and EMEI) keeping English as a main language. I would like to request your help here as I told the client ISO location and hreflang it will be just possible per language and they must need to localise each English region with local keywords, however I would like to double check if it will be any way (Sitemap, Hreflang) we can tell Google we are targeting per region and not per country? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | | Atalig20 -
Is using JavaScript to render translations safe for International SEO?
Hello World! Background: I am evaluating a tool/service that a company wants to use for managing the translated versions of their international/multi-lingual websites: https://www.transifex.com/product/transifexlive/ Transifex is asking webmaster to "simply add a snippet of JavaScript" to their website(s); the approved translations are added by the business in the back-end; and the translated sites are made live with the click of a button (on/to the proper ccTLD, sub-domain, or sub-directory, which is specified). CONCERN: Even though I know Google reads JavaScript for crawling and ranking,
International SEO | | SixSpokeMedia64
I am concerned because I see the "English text" when I view the source-code on the "German site", and I wonder if this is really acceptable? QUESTION: Is a service like this (such as Transifex using JavaScript to render translations client-side) safe for indexing and ranking for my clients' international search engine visibility, especially via Google? Thank you!0 -
What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site. Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page? Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish). Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc... Sitemap example for English website URL:
International SEO | | peteboyd
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url> Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url> Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!0 -
International SEO Subfolders / user journey etc
Hi According to all the resources i can find on Moz and elsewhere re int seo, say in the context of having duplicate versions of US & UK site, its best to have subfolders i.e. domain.com/en-gb/ & domain.com/en-us/ however when it comes to the user journey and promoting web address seems a bit weird to say visit us at: domain.com/en-us/ !? And what happens if someone just enters in domain.com from the US or UK ? My client wants to use an IP sniffer but i've read thats bad practice and should employ above style country/language code instead, but i'm confused about both the user journey and experience in the case of multiple sub folders. Any advice much appreciated ? Cheers Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
International SEO | | Monologix
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!0 -
Cross domain rel alternate, will it help or hurt?
I have a website that has similar pages on a US version and a UK version. Currently we want Uk traffic to go to the US, but the US domain is so strong it is outranking the UK in the UK. We want to try using rel alternate but have some concerns. Currently for some of our keywords US is #1, UK is #4. If we implement rel alternate, will it just remove our US page? We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot and lose traffic. Is this worth doing, will it just remove our US ranking and our double listing? Any anecdotes, experiences or opinions are appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | MarloSchneider0