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.
French Canadian Website and French Language URLs
-
Hello,
One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well?
So, this questions has two parts...
For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors?
For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?
-
So, was your hierarchy like this?
GER = www.domain.de = German language and URLs version of www.domain.com
FRA = www.domain.fr = French language and URLs version of www.domain.com
...and so on and so on?
-
So, this client has this current setup...
USA = www.domain.com in English
CAN = www.domain.ca in English
FR CAN = quebec.domain.ca = which based on this consideration, should be have URL's in French.
So, how would one handle accent marks and such in the URL?
We are using the Ektron CMS, which eventually, all the sites will live there and country specific domains can be redirected to a language and locale specific version of the website.
-
So, this client has this current setup...
USA = www.domain.com in English
CAN = www.domain.ca in English
FR CAN = quebec.domain.ca = which based on this consideration, should be have URL's in French.
So, how would one handle accent marks and such in the URL?
We are using the Ektron CMS, which eventually, all the sites will live there and country specific domains can be redirected to a language and locale specific version of the website.
-
We made 3 or 4 versions of our last clients site, cause the had German, French, English, and Chiniese, and what we did was a Umbraco CMS, so the client could do a version of all. That would be the best and safest rout. May be labor intensive, but smart thought process.
-
Well, is it content only available to French-Canadian's? For example, would your company's services be relevant to somebody from, say, Dallas, Texas in the US? Is any of your services relevant to English speaking people? And if so, what is the percentage?
Build your site for your clients/customers/users, and whatever makes sense to them. If only French speaking/reading people will be visiting your site (for the most part), then build everything in French (including URL's), as it will be legible. For the same reason you a Hindu site might not be relevant to you, regardless of their services (taking a stab in the dark that you might not know Hindu; I apologize if I'm wrong
You know what I mean? Bottom-line: build for your users and what is going to generate the greatest ROI.
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
-
Changing the language of the website meta title and description?
Hello, Moz community! I'm planning to change the language of my website title and description from English to rank better for queries on the local language. Do you think this would increase the local language ranking? And in case I need to switch back to English, let's say in 2021, would it be difficult to regain the current rankings? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thank you!
International SEO | | vhubert2 -
International 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 -
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 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
What language to use for URL's for Russian language?
Hi, Our site is in English, Spanish, Danish and Russian - the URL's are individual to the language they are in, but of course, Russian contains some strange characters so I decided not to use them in the URL's Any advice on how to create the URL's for russian language pages? thanks
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
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 -
Website Target in Europe
Hi, I am planning a site to target in Europe and I expect to translate my site into ten different languages namely English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish. I am doing some study of this case in targeting different countries for SEO, most of the advise are the following: a. Build 10 different websites and target different geographical location in Google Webmaster b. Get 10 different country specific domains for 10 different websites I would like to hear any suggestion if there is anything better than this ? I had all the materials and translation ready but building 10 different websites or getting 10 different domains are very time consuming and costly. I would be appreciated if any one had any advise for me to make the website more management friendly. Thank you. Tom
International SEO | | Stevejobs20110 -
Website Translation
Hi All, I know its not an SEO question, but....................... Can anyone suggest a few good website translation "widgets" I would like to give those who are not fluent in English and option to choose another language in which to view the page text. Thank You!!!
International SEO | | APICDA0