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.
-
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 -
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/ ? -
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!
-
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!
-
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)?
-
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
-
Why Google is not indexing each country/language subfolder on the ranks?
Hi folks, We use Magento 2 for the multi-country shops (its a multistore). The URL: www.avarcas.com The first days Google indexed the proper url in each country: avarcas.com/uk avarcas.com/de ... Some days later, all the countries are just indexing / (the root). I correctly set the subfolders in Webmaster tools. What's happening? Thanks
International SEO | | administratorwibee0 -
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!
International SEO | | Webpresence
Lee.0 -
Multilingual website - Url problem (sitemap)
At this moment our website both uses the language in the url like "en" and localizes the url itself ("books" in english and "boeken" in dutch). Because of the history of making our website multilingual we have a system that takes the browser language for the localization if the url doesn't contain a language like "en". This means: www.test.com/books = browser language www.test.com/en/books = english language www.test.com/boeken = browser language www.test.com/nl/boeken = dutch language Now for the sitemap this makes it a little troublesome for me because which hreflang is used for which url? 1) The first thing I thought of was using x-default for all urls that get the language of the browser. <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But as you can see we now got 2 times x-default. 2) Another solution I thought of was just use the localization of the url to determine the language like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But now we got 2 of each language for the same page. 3) The last solution I thought of was removing links without a language in the url (except for the homepage, which will still have an x-default) like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.comen/books</loc></url></code> But for this solution I need to put 301's at pages that are "deleted" and also need to change the system to 301 to the right page. Although the last point isn't really a problem I'm kind of worried that I will lose some of the "seo points" with a 301. (When we changed our domain in the past we had a bad experience with the 301 of our old domain) What do you think would be the best solution for SEO? Or do you have any other suggestions or solutions I haven't thought of.
International SEO | | Anycoin0 -
What is best practice of using google translate
Hi, I'm thinking of adding google translate to our retailing site so that we could reach more international customers. what about the pros&cons? Any experience of success of utilising it and what potential issues should I be looking at? Thanks
International SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Best process to 301 ecommerce store?
Hi, We have decided to segment our products and languages on to different country tlds. I know how to 301, but I am curious as to how I should actually do this, in what order to do it. Let's call the existing site with all products on OLDsite, and the new tld, where the products will also appear NEWsite. I am thinking of: Setting up NEWsite, but no sitemap. On launch of NEWsite, 301 all products on OLDsite to NEWsite (they will no longer appear on OLDsite) After some time, add sitemap, google verification in GWT, etc... on NEWsite. My thinking is that if I launch NEWsite and notify Google it will index the same products and content as OLDsite, and not necessarily check the 301 right? Which could lead to dupe content issues... Any ideas? We are only redirecting part of the site, so not all of it. Thanks!
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
Best way to enter Canada, SEO-wise?
We are thinking of splitting our e-Commerce site into a Canadian site w/ localized content, a potential French version and for additional relevance w/ localized currency. What would be the best way to go about this if we were wanting to gain traction as soon as possible on the organic side? Split the domain into domain.com and domain.com/ca/ (subfolders) Split the domain into ca.domain.com and domain.com Or split the domain into domain.com & wirelessemporium.ca Also, what are some key best practices we need to keep in mind to avoid duplicate content issues, etc?
International SEO | | eugeneku0 -
Best Practice for International Website with Two Versions
I have a client in the medical industry, and the company's product has been approved in various countries in Europe yet is awaiting approval in the US. That means we can share certain information in some countries that we cannot share in the US. Therefore, we plan to use an initial landing page that will ask what country the user is in (using a drop-down list to choose from if not located in the US) and then push him or her to the appropriate version of the site. Here is my question: What is the best way to ensure search engines can crawl the site beyond this landing page? Thanks for your time.
International SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Optimizing terms with accents/tildes in Spanish
Hello all, quick question. We are optimizing for a keyword that includes an accent in Spanish. Is it better to use the accented or regular form (i.e. inglés vs. ingles)? Also, is there any distinction between accents (áéí...) and the ene (ñ) in terms of strategy/best practices? Does this accent issue have a huge impact on ranking?
International SEO | | CuriosityMedia0