Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. French Canadian Website and French Language URLs

    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

    International SEO
    3
    6
    4523
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Aviatech
      Aviatech last edited by

      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Aviatech
        Aviatech @smstv last edited by

        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?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Aviatech
          Aviatech @THB last edited by

          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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Aviatech
            Aviatech @THB last edited by

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • smstv
              smstv last edited by

              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.

              Aviatech 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • THB
                THB last edited by

                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.

                Aviatech 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • fdl4712_aol.com

                  Is it worth maintaining multiple international websites

                  international technical

                  Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US. The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand. The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain. What would you advise? Thanks.

                  International SEO | | fdl4712_aol.com
                  2
                • spjain81

                  Correct Hreflang & Canonical Tags for Multi-Regional Website English Language Only having URL Parameters

                  Dear friends, We have a multi-regional website in English language only having the country selector on the top of each page and it adds countrycode parameters on each url. Website is built in Magento 1.8 and having 1 store with multiple store views. There is no default store set in Magento as I discussed with developer. Content is same for all the countries and only currency is changed. In navigation there are urls without url parameters but when we change store from any page it add parameters in the url for same page hence there are total 7 URLs. 6 URLs for each page (with country parameters) and 1 master url (without parameters) and making content duplicity. We have implemented hreflang tags on each page with url parameters but for canonical we have implemented master page url as per navigation without url parameters Example on this page. I think this is correct for master page but we should use URL parameters in canonical tags for each counry url too and there should be only 1 canonical tag on each country page url. Currently all the country urls are having master page canoncial tag as per the example. Please correct me if I am wrong and **in this case what has to be done for master page? **as google is indexing the pages without parameters too. We are also using GEOIP redirection for each store with country IP detection and for rest of the countries which are not listed on the website we are redirecting to USA store. Earlier it was 301 but we changed it to 302. Hreflang tags are showing errors in SEMRush due to redirection but in GWT it's OK for some pages it's showing no return tags only. Should I use **x-default tags for hreflang and country selector only on home page like this or should I remove the redirection? **However some of the website like this using redirection but header check tool doesn't show the redirection for this and for our website it shows 302 redirection. Sorry for the long post but looking for your support, please.

                  International SEO | | spjain81
                  0
                • Bee159

                  Which Google does a .ie website get shown in?

                  Hi all, I am working on a .ie website and I was under the understanding that if you have a regional domain, like .ie you will limited to being shown in a search engine like google.ie When I go to International Targeting in Google SEarch Console it says the site is associated with: Ireland Am I limiting my ability to rank well in worldwide Google searches with this domain and if so, how can I counter this? Many thanks.

                  International SEO | | Bee159
                  0
                • lcourse

                  How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?

                  I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
                  Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking? I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain). Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned? What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?

                  International SEO | | lcourse
                  0
                • Fisken

                  Two versions of a website with different languages - Best way to do it?

                  I'm working on a website for a Swedish artist and her page is in Swedish, everything is in Swedish on the site, even though it's not a lot of text on the site. We would like to have the site in English too, or another version of the site in English on a separate domain, what's the best way to proceed from here? The domain name is a .se (swedish domain), would it be better to create a another domain and host the english version of the site on a .com domain? Or will we bump into problems with duplicate content if we create a replica of the swedish site in english. We're using wordpress and I know that there's translation plugins out there, is that a good option? I'm a bit clueless on how to proceed and would love some help or guidance here.

                  International SEO | | Fisken
                  0
                • Monologix

                  URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages

                  Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
                  (a) URL structure
                  (b) "href lang" code
                  (c) rel canonical code
                  (d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!

                  International SEO | | Monologix
                  0
                • pikka

                  Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites

                  Hi I am wondering what the best URL format to use is when a website targets several countries, in several languages. (without owning the local domains, only a .com, and ideally to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains.) As an example, to target a hotel in Sweden (Google.se) are there any MUST-HAVE indicators in the URL to target the relevant countries? Such as hotelsite.com**/se/**hotel-name. Would this represent the language? Or is it the location of the product? To clarify a bit, I would like to target around 10 countries, with the product pages each having 2 languages (the local language + english). I'm considering using the following format: hotelsite.com/en/hotel-name (for english) and hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name (for swedish content of that same product) and then using rel=”alternate” hreflang=”se-SV” markup to target the /se/ page for Sweden (Google.se) and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” for UK? And to also geotarget those in Webmaster tools using those /se/ folders etc. Would this be sufficient? Or does there need to be an indicator of both the location, AND the language in the URLs? I mean would the URL's need to be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name/se-SV (for swedish) or can it just be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name? Any thoughts on best practice would be greatly appreciated.

                  International SEO | | pikka
                  0
                • HMK-NL

                  How to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries?

                  Dear all, what is the best way to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries? What must I add to my code of websites my .nl domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? What must I add to my code of websites my .be domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? Thanks in advance!

                  International SEO | | HMK-NL
                  3

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.