French Canadian Website and French Language URLs

[Aviatech]

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?

[Aviatech]

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?

[Aviatech]

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.

[Aviatech]

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.

[smstv]

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.

[THB]

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.