Country/Language combination in subdirectory URL

[EcommRulz]

Hello,

We are a multi country/multi lingual (English, Arabic) website. We are following a subdirectory structure to separate and geotarget the country/language combinations.

Currently our english and arabic urls are the same:

For UAE: example.com/ae (English Site)

For Saudi Arabic: example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia)

We want to separate the English and Arabic language URLs and I wanted to know if there is any preference as to which kind of URL structure we should go with :

example.com/ae-en  (Country-Language)

example.com/en-ae (Language-Country)

example.com/ae/en (Country/Language)

Is there any logic to deciding how to structure the language/country combinations or is is entirely a matter of personal preference.

Thanks!

[EcommRulz]

Hi Andy,

thanks for your help. Sorry I should I have been more clear with my question- We basically have the following sites set up as subdirectories:

example.com/ae (United Arab Emirates)

example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia)

example.com/om(Oman)

example.com/qa(Qatar)

example.com/bh(Bahrain)

example.com (International - not country specific)

ae, sa, om, qa, bh are country identifiers

language identifies are "en" for english and "ar" for arabic. (The English and Arabic URL for each country is currently the same)

Using these identifiers above should I make the country website URLs as follows ?:

example.com/ae-en (UAE English)

example.com/ae-ar(UAE Arabic)

example.com/sa-en(Saudi Arabia English)

example.com/sa-ar(Saudi Arabia Arabic)

... etc for the country sites

and example.com for the (International  site)

example.com/ar for the (International Arabic Site)

[MickEdwards]

Andy is spot on.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Bejan,

Your chosen language should be sat at the primary domain.

For example, if your are a Saudi based site that wants Arabic as the primary language, this shouldn't be sat in an identifier. Ideally, you want to have a primary site language as this is how most will do it.

www.example.com (Arabic Language)
www.example.com/en/ (English Version)

Or...

www.example.com (English Language)
www.example.com/ae/ (Arabic Version)

You need to also remember to set these correctly by using HREFLANG. This is what will tell Google which languages should be associated to which pages. Moz have a couple of very useful pages on this here and here.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy