URL Structure for Multilingual Site With Two Major Locations
-
We're working on a hotel site that has two major locations. Locations currently live in separate domains. The sites target users from around the world and offer content in multiple languages. The client is looking into migrating all content into one domain and creating sub-folders for each location. The sites are strong in organic search, but they want to expand the keyword portfolio to broader keywords regarding activities, which they also market on their sites. The goal is to scale their domain authority as they have a really strong brand. The question is which would be a preferred URL structure in case content is finally migrated into one domain? - (we have doubts about were the lang folder should be placed as each location has different amenities and services).
Here is what we had in mind:
domain.com – this is the homepage
domain.com/location-1 – to target English visitors
domain.com/location-2 – to target English visitors
domain.com/es/location-1 – to target Spanish visitors
domain.com/es/location-2 – to target Spanish visitors
-
You're welcome
-
Thank you Olaf and Gianluca for the validation and additional tips. Much appreciated.
-
The answer given by Olaf is substantially correct.
I would suggest the solution you have in mind too. And, as Olaf wrote, be sure to localize the UI (menú, URLs...) for a correct user experience and Spanish SEO.
-
We prefer the way you suggest, use and also translate the menu names:
domain.com/location-1 – to target English visitors
domain.com/es/establecimiento-1 – to target Spanish visitors
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
-
Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags
Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
GSC is not showing URLs in Regional Language Characters in Search Analytics
Hi, We have a regional language sub-domain, which has the URI in the regional language characters (Hindi). While looking at the Search Analytics data in GSC, we get all the URLs in ASCII format. To resolve this issue, we even encoded the characters in UTF-8, by adding the following in the of the page: However, we are still getting illegible URLs in search console. It would be really great if someone could help me out with this issue. Thanks!
International SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Correct site internationalization strategy
Hi, I'm working on the internationalization of a large website; the company wants to reach around 100 countries. I read this Google doc: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en in order to design the strategy. The strategy is the following: For each market, I'll define a domain or subdomain with the next settings: Leave the mysitename.com for the biggest market in which it has been working for years, and define the geographic target in Google search console. Reserve the ccTLD domains for other markets In the markets where I'm not able to reserve the ccTLD domains, I'll use subdomains for the .com site, for example us.mysitename.com, and I'll define in Google search console the geographic target for this domain. Each domain will only be in the preferred language of each country (but the user will be able to change the language via cookies). The content will be similar in all markets of the same language, for example, in the .co.uk and in .us the texts will be the same, but the product selections will be specific for each market. Each URL will link to the same link in other countries via direct link and also via hreflang. The point of this is that all the link relevance that any of them gets, will be transmitted to all other sites. My questions are: Do you think that there are any possible problems with this strategy? Is it possible that I'll have problems with duplicate content? (like I said before, all domains will be assigned to a specific geographic target) Each site will have around 2.000.000 of URLs. Do you think that this could generate problems? It's possible that only primary and other important locations will have URLs with high quality external links and a decent TrustRank. Any other consideration or related experience with a similar process will be very appreciated as well. Sorry for all these questions, but I want to be really sure with this plan, since the company's growth is linked to this internationalization process. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | robertorg0 -
Hreflang for bilingual website in the same region/location
Hi everyone, got a quick question concerning the hreflang tag. I have a website with 2 different language versions targeting to the same region(Reason: The area is bilingual however not everyone speaks the other language fluently) Question:
International SEO | | ennovators
Can I use hreflang in that case like: Many thanks in advance0 -
What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site. Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page? Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish). Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc... Sitemap example for English website URL:
International SEO | | peteboyd
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url> Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url> Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!0 -
Moving British site to the US... who will have .com? US or UK?
We are the UK's first baby social commerce site launched in Nov 2011. We're doing quite well and are looking at expanding to the US. However I'm not sure what advice you'd give me in terms of internationalising the site. I see three options on how to deal with the URL structure? Make US site as .com as it will be my main source of revenue for the long run and redirect all British traffic to .co.uk Have .com for both UK and US but have the URL as either: us.babyhuddle.com or as babyhuddle.com/us/. Same thing for the UK Another option? Would love to hear the feedback from you guys. Thanks, Walid
International SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
Redirecting users based on location
My site is available in EN, DE, SW, SP, FR, IT, CH and JP. However, the EN sites ranks much better than the other languages, and even when searching in another language the EN homepage is normally the result that appears. Would it be worthwhile to automatically redirect users to the site in the same language they are searching in or country they are searching from? If so, how do I go about this? Thanks!
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
How can I Get SE results as if browsing from a differetn location?
Hi, I would like to know if anyone has an easy way off allowing me to browse a SE and get results based on as if I was browsing from a different location. EG I am based in the UK and therefore google customises my result as such. However I am working for a client targetting the US, so I need to get SE results as if I was browsing from there. Thanks
International SEO | | James770