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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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. Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites

    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.

    Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites

    International SEO
    5
    7
    21442
    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.
    • pikka
      pikka last edited by

      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.

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

        I have a multilingual & multi-country website : http://www.asaan.com
        It runs on a subdomain structure, which I want to convert to subdirectory, for SEO benefits. So, ae.asaan.com would become http://www.asaan.com/ae/
        However, I need to understand how best to integrate the language code into the new structure.
        So, should it be http://www.asaan.com/ae/en/ (for English for UAE) OR
        http://www.asaan.com/ae-en/ (for English in UAE)?
        As UAE would also have Arabic, its important for me to understand the benefits of such a structure from SEO perspective
        Please advice

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • carpeto
          carpeto Subscriber last edited by

          hello,

          Nice article. I have a questions:

          If you have a multi lang site with Subdirectory:

          would you use Subdirectory:
          domain.com for the english version or its bertetr to use straight a redirect from domain.com to .com/en/ ?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • pikka
            pikka @Aleyda last edited by

            Thanks Aleyda, this is great!

            I'm wondering, if on a TLD, is it necessary to have both the country code and language in the URL? Or would it be possible to just use language and use href lang in the code to specify the where it's relevant?

            I do have each venue in the local language AND in english (though I would prefer both of these languages aimed at the local country - this is because nobody outside the countries search for these venues, but many do also search in english rather than just their local lang)

            I have:

            • .com/se/sv/venue-name (Venue in Sweden, in Swedish)
            • .com/se/en/venue-name (Venue in Sweden, in English)

            Or is it better to just use language?

            • .com/se-sv/venue-name
            • (not sure how to do the english version here)

            Would country code be more relevant to use in this case?

            Thanks! 🙂

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

              Hi there!

              To target countries the best way to go is with ccTLDs and if you don't have the ccTLDs then it is with subdirectories within a generic TLD, so you'll have:

              • For the US: yourbrand.com/category-a/
              • For the UK: yourbrand.com/en-gb/category-a/
              • For Spain: yourbrand.com/es-es/categoria-a/
              • For Mexico: yourbrand.com/es-mx/categoria-a/

              Please keep in mind that the "name" of the directory here it's not important but is just to keep it usable and short and follow the language naming conventions. What it is important is that each country has its own consistent directory structure.

              It's fundamental that the look and feel as well as all of the elements of each ones of your different country versions (in the different directories) are localized to target their audience: From the translation of the URLs, titles, descriptions, headings, text, etc. to the appropriate language, using the right currency, etc.

              In order to geolocate each directory and inform Google that they're targeting different countries you can do it through Google Webmaster Tools with the "Geolocate" option by registering each directory independently and targeting it.

              Additionally, if you have many country versions with the same language (US & UK or Spain & Mexico), in order to avoid having content duplication issues, informing Google that each one of these pages are in these languages but targeting different audiences you should use the hreflang tags as specified here.

              By doing this you'll make sure you'll have the base set to target your different country search audiences with Google without running into content duplication issues.

              For more information about how to establish and identify the best strategy to follow take a look at this post I wrote some time ago about International SEO strategy.

              If you have any question just let me know!

              pikka 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • pikka
                pikka @firstconversion last edited by

                Thanks for your reply, Stephen.

                Is www.example.com/se/en/hotel-name the shortest, best possible way to do this?

                So for the swedish language version it would be www.example.com/se/se/hotel-name (to keep the format consistent)?

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

                  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

                  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-start-multilingual-site.html

                  Location and language ->  www.example.com/se/en/

                  S

                  pikka 1 Reply 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
                  • Brando16

                    Internationalization guides for subfolder structure

                    I'm wondering if there are any guides out there that list how subfolders should be structured for Internationalization? The first language/location that I'm targeting is Portuguese in Brazil so should my folder structure be: www.example.com/br/pt/ or www.example.com/pt-br/ I did find the guide below but was wondering if there was perhaps anything from Google? http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm

                    International SEO | | Brando16
                    0
                  • DocdataCommerce

                    How to best set up international XML site map?

                    Hi everyone, I've been searching about a problem, but haven't been able to find an answer. We would like to generate a XML site map for an international web shop. This shop has one domain for Dutch visitors (.nl) and another domain for visitors of other countries (Germany, France, Belgium etc.) (.com). The website on the 2 domains looks the same, has the same template and same pages, but as it is targeted to other countries, the pages are in different languages and the urls are also in different languages (see example below for a category bags). Example Netherlands:
                    Dutch domain: www.client.nl 
                    Example Dutch bags category page: www.client.nl/tassen Example France:
                    International domain: www.client.com 
                    Example French bags category page: www.client.com/sacs When a visitor is on the Dutch domain (.nl) which shows the Dutch content, he can switch country to for example France in the country switch and then gets redirected to the other, international .com domain. Also the other way round. Now we want to generate a XML sitemap for these 2 domains. As it is the same site, but on 2 domains, development wants to make 1 sitemap, where we take the Dutch version with Dutch domain as basis and in the alternates we specify the other language versions on the other domain (see example below). <loc>http://www.client.nl/tassen</loc>
                    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
                    hreflang="fr"
                    href="http://www.client.com/sacs"
                    /></xhtml:link<br> Is this the best way to do this? Or would we need to make 2 site maps, as it are 2 domains?

                    International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
                    0
                  • Webpresence

                    How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)

                    Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust! We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling. Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there. They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com? Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
                    Lee.

                    International SEO | | Webpresence
                    0
                  • Dan-Lawrence

                    International SEO Subfolders / user journey etc

                    Hi According to all the resources i can find on Moz and elsewhere re int seo, say in the context of having duplicate versions of US & UK site, its best to have subfolders i.e. domain.com/en-gb/ & domain.com/en-us/ however when it comes to the user journey and promoting web address seems a bit weird to say visit us at: domain.com/en-us/ !? And what happens if someone just enters in domain.com from the US or UK ? My client wants to use an IP sniffer but i've read thats bad practice and should employ above style country/language code instead, but i'm confused about both the user journey and experience in the case of multiple sub folders. Any advice much appreciated ? Cheers Dan

                    International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
                    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
                  • KevinDunne

                    Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?

                    hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!

                    International SEO | | KevinDunne
                    0
                  • Stevejobs2011

                    Website Target in Europe

                    Hi, I am planning a site to target in Europe and I expect to translate my site into ten different languages namely English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Portuguese, Dutch and Swedish. I am doing some study of this case in targeting different countries for SEO, most of the advise are the following: a.  Build 10 different websites and target different geographical location in Google Webmaster b.  Get 10 different country specific domains for 10 different websites I would like to hear any suggestion if there is anything better than this ? I had all the materials and translation ready but building 10 different websites or getting 10 different domains are very time consuming and costly. I would be appreciated if any one had any advise for me to make the website more management friendly. Thank you. Tom

                    International SEO | | Stevejobs2011
                    0

                  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
                  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.