What strategy is better for a multilingual site for the SEO point of view?
-
Hi everyone, in a case for a site with two languages like spanish and english, how would do you deal with it?
I can see 4 cases, which is better??
1. With differents domains: mydomain.es (for spanish version) and mydomain.com (for english version).
2. With subfolder mydomain.com/es/ and mydomain.com/en/
3. With Subdomain: es.mydomain.com and en.mydomain.com
4 With URL translation (any url is translated in ther languages but not use of subdomain or subfolder): mydominain.com/hola and mydomiain.com/hello
Thanks very much for your answers (i love this forum).
-
Does it make sense to target my Portuguese translation for Brazil to Portugal as well? Or do I create another version of the site that is hreflang=pr so that people that speak Portuguese in other locations throughout the world will at least get a Portuguese translation?
-
After doing some more research I'm going to go with your suggestion...thanks!
-
By using en-US would I be leaving out English speaking users in other countries? I'm wondering if I should use this format:
For English
For Portuguese
-
Hey Brandon,
I would just do en-US and not bother about having just en. See below for example.
For English
For Portuguese
-
So when implementing hreflang in the head section, do you call out the alternative and main language on every single page?
So for example if I'm implementing Brazilian Portuguese where the main language is English, for my English site it would be:
Then for the Portuguese site it would be:
-
Yup, I think as long as you specify the hreflang for all languages including the principale one you'll be fine.
-
Thanks very much for the answer, i know about the hreflanf, with sub-folder i think for the principal language you can omitted the sub-folder: example.com for spanish and example.com/en for english, but not so sure if that is good.
-
Hi,
I've actually had to deal with the same issue this year. From the research I did a while ago there's one solution that stood out for me.
I went with the sub-folder. example.com/en & example.com/es and made sure that all my pages add the hreflang attribute that points the page with its language info.
The main benefits of using a subfolder is that you don't have to share your domain authority between the different language sites.
Here's some resource to get you started
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
-
US site vs New Canadian site for Brand
Hi Everyone, My company decided to create a Canadian site for Canadian customers. How do I slowly transition the US site for ranking in Google.ca? I was thinking of using robots.txt to block Google.Ca from crawling the US site? Can anyone provide some advice oh how this should be managed? Thank you!
International SEO | | JMSCC0 -
International SEO Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
International Site Merge
Hello, I've never had to deal with an international site before, let alone a site merge. These are two large sites, we've got a few smaller old sites that are currently redirecting to the main site (UK). We are looking at moving all the sites to the .com domain. We are also currently not using SSL (on the main pages, we are on the checkout). We also have a m.domain.com site. Are there any good guides on what needs to be done? My current strategy would be: Convert site to SSL. Mobile site and desktop site must be on the same domain. Start link building to the .com domain now (weaker link profile currently) What's the best way of handling the domains and languages? We're currently using a .tv site for the UK and .com for the US. I was thinking, and please correct me if i'm wrong, that we move the US site from domain.com to domain.com/us/ and the domain.tv to domain.com/en/ Would I then reference these by the following: What would we then do with the canonicals? Would they just reference their "local" version? Any advice or articles to read would really be appreciated.
International SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Which will rank higher: Non-mobile friendly site in native language vs. mobile friendly global site in English?
Hi, we are currently implementing a mobile site, e.g. m.company.com. The global mobile site will only be available in English. We have local subsites of the desktop site, e.g. company.com/fr. The local subsites are not mobile friendly. If a user does a search for a brand term in France, **which site will rank higher in SERPs? **If it will be the global site, is there anything we can do (other than making them mobile friendly) to make the local sites rank higher? Would it be the mobile-friendly site, even though it is only in English, because the local site would be penalized for not being mobile friendly? Or would it be the local site, because Google will give priority to the fact that it's in French, which matches the language of the person searching?
International SEO | | jennifer.new0 -
Naming URL for Russian version of the site
Hi, Our site has two languages: English and Russian. My question is that should I use Cyrillic letters in the URL structure and file naming of the Russian version of the site, as Russian users are searching for information by using Russian words not English words? Thanks in advance, Sam
International SEO | | Awaraman0 -
Homepage URL for multi-language site
Hi, We are setting up a new site, and currently considering the URL and folder structure of the site. We will have 2-3 different language versions, and we have decided to use sub folders for this. My question is regarding the homepage URL. We want the English language site (en) to be the default one, from where you can then change the language. Should I have a folder for each of the language versions (as described below)? www.mydomain.com/en
International SEO | | Awaraman
(this would be the default page where everyone would always come if they type www.mydomain.com to webrowser) www,mydomain.com/ru www.mydomain.com/es Or, would it be better for SEO to have www.mydomain.com as the default URL where we would have the English version of the site, and then have two other folders (as below) where we would have the 2 other language versions: www,mydomain.com/ru www.mydomain.com/es Thank you in advance, BR Sam0 -
How to SEO for Spanish-Speaking People in California
I found myself in need of translating our current website into Spanish language so that we can target the Spanish-speaking population of L.A. and surrounding areas. I have several questions: 1. What should my url structure be? ex: domain.com/es/subpage
International SEO | | cgman
would that work? 2. Do I need to worry about any header information? Do I just translate the whole thing into Spanish with meta info etc..? What about rel="canonical", what do I need to do with the spanish translated pages? Any other tips for SEO in Spanish? I plan on hiring a translator to translate the entire website into Spanish and thought about putting it in its own sub-directory, for example: domain.com/es/ Thanks for looking!0 -
Pop-up to select country. Any negative SEO effect?
Hi there! We have similar websites in different countries (it's an ecommerce site). Some times, those websites share the same language and, for example, people from Mexico end up in a page from our website in Argentina. Therefore they see our products in their language buy in a foreign currency. We would like to show them a pop-up (like a shadowbox) depending on their IP to allow them to go to their local website. There wouldn't be any redirect. Would that affect our rankings in any way? Would Googlebots see that as well? Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0