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. Multilingual Ecommerce Product Pages Best Practices

    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.

    Multilingual Ecommerce Product Pages Best Practices

    International SEO
    3
    5
    2119
    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.
    • sedwards
      sedwards last edited by

      Hi Mozzers,

      We have a marketplace with 20k+ products, most of which are written in English. At the same time we support several different languages. This changes the chrome of the site (nav, footer, help text, buttons, everything we control) but leaves all the products in their original language.

      This resulted in all kinds of duplicate content (pages, titles, descriptions) being detected by SEOMoz and GWT. After doing some research we implemented the on page  rel="alternate" hreflang="x", seeing as our situation almost perfectly matched the first use case listed by Google on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077.

      This ended up not helping at all. Google still reports duplicate titles and descriptions for thousands of products, months after setting this up. We are thinking about changing to the sitemap implementation rel="alternate" hreflang="X", but are not sure if this will work either. Other options we have considered include noindex or blocks with robots.txt when the product language is not the same as the site language. That way the feature is still open to users while removing the duplicate pages for Google.

      So I'm asking for input on best practice for getting Google to correctly recognize one product, with 6 different language views of that same product. Can anyone help?

      Examples:

      (Site in English, Product in English) http://website.com/products/product-72

      (Site in Spanish, Product in English) http://website.com/es/products/product-72

      (Site in German, Product in English) http://website.com/de/products/product-72

      etc...

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • sedwards
        sedwards @gfiorelli1 last edited by

        Hi Gianluca,

        Thanks for responding. I took a look at your guide, and I definitely understand the gold standard would be to get everything translated professionally, and provide a completely native experience.

        Unfortunately due to our catalog size that would be prohibitively expensive, so I need to think of another solution. It sounds like from your guide that we are doing more harm than good, even with alternate language syntax in place.

        Based on your answer, my thought would be to meta noindex any product page where the site language is not the same as the product. That way every page in the index will be 100% localized for potential visitors.

        So if its a Spanish product index: site.com/es/product, but meta noindex site.com/de/product, site.com/product, etc.

        If we follow that path, does it make sense to remove the alternate language syntax, since all the linked URLs will be no index?

        Thanks again for your help.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • gfiorelli1
          gfiorelli1 last edited by

          Hi Scott,

          sorry to tell you that you're doing International SEO quite bad. No offence, but what you describe is how not to do International SEO.

          If you are targeting Spanish end users, you must localize in Spanish everything:

          • template elements;
          • URLs
          • products description
          • Titles
          • e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g

          It is not just a question of SEO, but of usability too. Just revert the situation: what would be your reaction if you enter in a site, click on the english version and everything is written in Spanish?

          Obviously, if you have the spanish version of your all in spanish, that will help a lot ranking for spanish queries.

          In order to find an answer to your doubts, I warmly suggest you to read this guide to International SEO I wrote here on SEOmoz few time ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-dropping-the-information-dust

          Ciao 🙂

          sedwards 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • gfiorelli1
            gfiorelli1 @malecce last edited by

            Your answer is conceptually correct, but the implementation not that much.

            This kind of URL is not the ideal: http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_spa/treviluxurypenthouse

            The best is to put every language mirror of your multilingual site in a subfolder: i.e. /es/ in the above cited case.

            Google, in fact, understands better that the /es/, /de/, /fr/ subfolders are targeting Spanish, German and French, as those are the ISO codes for those languages.

            The subfolders way, then, is even more suggested if you are targeting a country, because you can geotarget a subfolder in Google Webmasters Tools.

            Finally, a warm suggestion: if you really want to be sure to rank in Russia, then you should think about Yandex SEO... which means:

            • Having the site in a .ru domain name (Yandex is biased toward russian domain terminations);
            • Have the site in russian.. also the URLs (yours is in english)
            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • malecce
              malecce last edited by

              Hi

              For me it is wrong to present a product with the navigation in different languages ​​and the description always in English

              We work in travel and i want show you how we work with the same apartment

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments/treviluxurypenthouse  english default language

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_ita/treviluxurypenthouse

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_spa/treviluxurypenthouse

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/fontainedetreviappartements/treviluxurypenthouse

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_de/treviluxurypenthouse

              http://www.rentalinrome.com/trevifountainapartments_ru/treviluxurypenthouse

              we change all, navigation and content

              This is the best way for index the same product in different language avoid duplicate content

              Ciao

              Maurizio

              gfiorelli1 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

              • gxpl09

                Who is the best SEO expert in the World?

                seo expert

                Hey everyone, i am creating a blog post on Top SEO Experts in the World. I need your recommendation who is in the top 10 list? Your suggestions is highly appreciated for me. Thanks!

                International SEO | | gxpl09
                0
              • realpatients

                Best practice for Spanish version of English website?

                I'm doing an audit for a site that has all of its English pages under the same roof with Spanish pages in Wordpress. It is intended for Chicago, not Mexico. I suspect this is not a good thing, but I only have instinct to rely on here. What is the best practice for having the same website in two languages? http://www.enhancedform.com/ and http://www.enhancedform.com/spanish/

                International SEO | | realpatients
                0
              • absoauto

                How can I change the currency Google lists my products with in the SERP?

                I.e. This product - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm - shows up as USD in the SERP. (In the US it just won't show a currency, if Canada it will show USD on the SERP). My pricing is all in CAD, how can I tell Google this? (It knows pricing is CAD in my Google Product Listings/Merchant Center). Thanks!

                International SEO | | absoauto
                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
              • sparkit

                Are my translated pages damaging my ranking?

                Hi there, I have a site in English but with duplicates in different languages. The first problem is that these translated versions of my site receive no ranking on google stars (while the english does) - why is this? The second problem is that SEOmoz counts the errors on my site and then duplicates this error count for all the translated versions of my site - meaning I have a huge amount of errors (too many on-page links). Add this to the fact that I use affilite ID´s to track different types of traffic to my site - so all page urls in english and other languages, with an affiliate id on the end of the url, count as an error. This means I have a huge amount of on page errors indicated by SEOmoz, plus no ranking for my translated pages - I think this is really harming my overall ranking and site trust. What are your opinions on this?

                International SEO | | sparkit
                0
              • mongillo

                International (foreign language) URL's best practices

                I'm curious if there is a benefit or best practice with regards to using the localized language on international sites (with specific ccTLDs).  For example, should my french site (site.fr) use the french language as keywords within the URLs or should they be in english? e.g. www.site.fr/nourriture  vs. www.site.fr/food Is that considered best practice for SEO (or just for brand perception those markets?).  Is there a tangible loss in SEO if we do not use the correct language for those URLs and just stick with English around the world? I recall seeing a Matt Cutts video on the topic and he said that google does support i18n URL's but other SE's might not support them as gracefully but he didn't come down with a hard recommendation to go with i18n URL's or just English. Would love a strong ruling in favor one direction based on best practices.

                International SEO | | mongillo
                0
              • Corel

                Non US site pages indexed in US Google search

                Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results.  Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page.  At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region.  Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie

                International SEO | | Corel
                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
              • 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.