Multilingual blogs and site structure
-
Hi everyone,
I have a question about multilingual blogs and site structure.
Right now, we have the typical subfolder localization structure.
ex:
domain.com/page (english site)
domain.com/ja/page (japanese site)
However, the blog is a slightly more complicated. We'd like to have english posts available in other languages (as many of our users are bilinguals). The current structure suggests we use a typical domain.com/blog or domain.com/ja/blog format, but we have issues if a Japanese (logged in) user wants to view an English page.
domain.com/blog/article would redirect them to domain.com/ja/blog/article thus 404-ing the user if the post doesn't exist in the alternate language.
One suggestion (that I have seen on sites such as etsy/spotify is to add a /en/ to the blog area:
ex
Would this be the correct way to avoid this issue? I know we could technically work around the 404 issue, but I don't want to create duplicate posts in /ja/ that are in English or visa versa. Would it affect the rest of the site if we use a /en/ subfolder just for the blog?
Another option is to use:
but I'm not sure if this alternative is better.
Any help would be appreciated!
-
Thanks for the clarification.
I can't really comment intelligently without knowing more about the nature of the site and the intended audience.
But may I gently suggest you might want to think about the issue more broadly than as a technical SEO issue?
For instance, why do you assume that English readers wouldn't be interested in Japanese holidays when you also say many readers are bilingual? If you made an editorial decision to publish everything in both languages, the SEO piece would look very different.
I always advocate settling the editorial issues first, then plugging in the SEO component.
-
Hi Daniel,
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The blog posts would usually be written in the original language. So we'll have some in English and some in Japanese. It's likely that we will translate some posts but there will be some that are too culture based to be useful in a different language. (Say a post about a Japanese holiday that might not be useful in English)
So to answer your question, there will definitely be some posts in English that are not translated into Japanese and visa versa.
-
Very interesting. I am working on a similar issue for a client. The site, including a blog, will be available in 5 languages.
But I'm not sure I precisely understand your issue.
Are all your blog posts originally written in one language only -- and that is that language English?
Do you ever alternate languages within a blog post?
Do you intend to have identical posts in both English and Japanese ? Or will there be some English-only posts, and some Japanese-only posts?
From you post, it sounds like you might be intending to translate some posts but not others. Why is that?
It seems to me, you have to sort through these editorial issues first before coming up with an SEO strategy.
It all comes down to who your intended audience is and how they can best be served.
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
-
Best Web-site Structure/ SEO Strategy for an online travel agency?
Dear Experts! I need your help with pointing me in the right direction. So far I have found scattered tips around the Internet but it's hard to make a full picture with all these bits and pieces of information without a professional advice. My primary goal is to understand how I should build my online travel agency web-site’s (https://qualistay.com) structure, so that I target my keywords on correct pages and do not create a duplicate content. In my particular case I have very similar properties in similar locations in Tenerife. Many of them are located in the same villa or apartment complex, thus, it is very hard to come up with the unique description for each of them. Not speaking of amenities and pricing blocks, which are standard and almost identical (I don’t know if Google sees it as a duplicate content). From what I have read so far, it’s better to target archive pages rather than every single property. At the moment my archive pages are: all properties (includes all property types and locations), a page for each location (includes all property types). Does it make sense adding archive pages by property type in addition OR in stead of the location ones if I, for instance, target separate keywords like 'villas costa adeje' and 'apartments costa adeje'? At the moment, the title of the respective archive page "Properties to rent in costa adeje: villas, apartments" in principle targets both keywords... Does using the same keyword in a single property listing cannibalize archive page ranking it is linking back to? Or not, unless Google specifically identifies this as a duplicate content, which one can see in Google Search Console under HTML Improvements and/or archive page has more incoming links than a single property? If targeting only archive pages, how should I optimize them in such a way that they stay user-friendly. I have created (though, not yet fully optimized) descriptions for each archive page just below the main header. But I have them partially hidden (collapsible) using a JS in order to keep visitors’ focus on the properties. I know that Google does not rank hidden content high, at least at the moment, but since there is a new algorithm Mobile First coming up in the near future, they promise not to punish mobile sites for a collapsible content and will use mobile version to rate desktop one. Does this mean I should not worry about hidden content anymore or should I move the descirption to the bottom of the page and make it fully visible? Your feedback will be highly appreciated! Thank you! Dmitry
Technical SEO | | qualistay1 -
Redirecting a blog
We've acquired another company and want to redirect their soon-to-be-obsolete website to ours. It includes a blog with many blog posts. Should we: only 301 redirect the top level blog URL
Technical SEO | | Caro-O
try redirect individual blogs to blogs of a similar topic on our site (least practical I'm sure)
redirect all their individual posts to our main blog URL Thanks, Caro1 -
Structure Data Issue
HiI found few errors in Google webmaster tools under structure data. The error shows "Missing: name' but when I click 'Test Live Data' it shows 'All good'. Currently we are using Drupal CMS and please find attached error screenshot.Please advice on this issue.Thanks,SatlaqlGEyp7
Technical SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
Canonical URLs in an eCommerce site
We have a website with 4 product categories (1. ice cream parlors, 2. frozen yogurt shops etc.). A few sub-categories (e.g. toppings, smoothies etc.) and the products contained in those are available in more than one product category (e.g. the smoothies are available in the "ice cream parlors" category, but also in the "frozen yogurt shops" category). My question: Unfortunately the website has been designed in a way that if a subcategory (e.g. smoothies) is available in more than 1 category, then itself (the subcategory page) + all its product pages will be automatically visible under various different urls. So now I have several urls for one and the same product: www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|FROZEN-YOGURT-SHOPS-391-2-5 and http://www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|ICE-CREAM-PARLORS-391-1-5 And also several ones for one and the same sub-category (they all include exactly the same set of products): http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-1-12-0-4 (the smoothies contained in the ice cream parlors category) http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-2-12-0-4 (the same smoothies, contained in the frozen yogurt shops category) This is happening with around 100 pages. I would add canonical tags to the duplicates, but I'm afraid that by doing so, the category (frozen yogurt shops) that contains several non-canonical sub-categories (smoothies, toppings etc.) , might not show up anymore in search results or become irrelevant for Google when searching for example for "products for frozen yoghurt shops". Do you know if this would be actually the case? I hope I explained it well..
Technical SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
Two Sites - One Domain
I just want to be sure, but if I install a Wordpress blog in a subfolder of a HTML site, Google will see that as one site, not two different sites, correct? Even if there is two index files?
Technical SEO | | jshiraz0 -
URL Structure Question
Hey folks, I have a weird problem and currently no idea how to fix it. We have a lot of pages showing up as duplicates although they are the same page, the only difference is the url structure. They seem to show up like: http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page What would I need to do to force the URLs into one format or the other to avoid having that one page counting as two? The same issue pops up with upper and lower case: http://www.example.com/Page and http://www.example.com/page Is there any solution to this or would I need to forward them with 301s or similar? Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
Promoting a blog or a blog article
Hi what is the best way to promote a blog or a blog article. What i want to do is to find a site when i can put part of the article on that site and then have a link going to my blog for the article. Can anyone recommend any sites that do this please or the best ways to promote a new article from a blog
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Search optimal Tab structure?
Good day, We are in the process of starting a website redesign/development. We will likely be employing a tabbing structure on our home page and would like to be able to capitalize on the keyword content found across the various tabs. The tab structure will be similar to how this site achieves tabs: http://ugmo.com/ I've uploaded a screen grab of this page as the Googlebot user agent. The text "Soil Intelligence for professional Turf Managers" clicks through to this page: http://ugmo.com/?quicktabs_1=1#quicktabs-1 So I'm thinking there could be some keyword dilution there. That said Google is very much aware of the text on the quicktabs-1 page being related to the home page content: http://www.google.com/search?q=Up+your+game+with+precise+soil+moisture%2C+salinity+and+temperature+measurements.+And+in+the+process%2C+save+water%2C+resources%2C+money.+inurl%3Augmo.com&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe= Is this the best search optimal way to add keyword density on a home page with a tab structure? Or is there a better means of achieving this? {61bfcca1-5f32-435e-a311-7ef4f9b592dd}_tabs_as_Googlebot.png
Technical SEO | | Hershel.Miller0