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  4. Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?

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Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?

International SEO
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  • Amjath
    Amjath last edited by Feb 21, 2011, 3:35 PM

    Hi Everyone,

    This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites.

    We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de.

    On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below:

    example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html

    Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users?

    Google guidelines say that this should be ok.

    Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community!

    Thanks,

    Supriya.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Amjath
      Amjath @NeilInFrance last edited by Feb 23, 2011, 2:47 PM Feb 23, 2011, 2:47 PM

      Thank you so much Neil! That helps!!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NeilInFrance
        NeilInFrance last edited by Feb 23, 2011, 2:45 PM Feb 23, 2011, 7:12 AM

        As an SEO you're obliged to say translate all the folder names.

        If you want to optimize your site for search engines, it is strongly recommended to use keywords in the Urls of the pages you'd like to see in the SERPs ; Its not compulsory, though, and with non-competitive terms you may get good rankings without it. A lot of sites have urls like mysite.com/index.php?page=123 and still rank well

        A German site has German keywords obviously and you should have these words in your Url if you want an optimized site

        If you're saying that technical reasons you can't do this, you'll have to make extra efforts elsewhere

        Make sure that you have a fully translated breadcrumbs and navigation menus ... but if you can do this you shouldn't really be that far off translating the urls

        • Neil
        Amjath 1 Reply Last reply Feb 23, 2011, 2:47 PM Reply Quote 1
        • Amjath
          Amjath @ninjamarketer last edited by Feb 21, 2011, 6:36 PM Feb 21, 2011, 6:36 PM

          Hi Sameer,

          Thanks for the reply! I am not worried about the content.

          We needed some direction on URL rules. Translating entire folder structure in german is not feasible in phase 1 of this project hence we thought of translating just the last folder and filename in german. Actually the example link that I used in the original question does not display properly. Let me try again

          example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • petrakraft
            petrakraft last edited by Feb 23, 2011, 2:45 PM Feb 21, 2011, 4:43 PM

            I strongly suggest keeping the german url's on the german domain, too.
            For usability and for seo purpose.
            The Germans won't search for the english terms and text - so it is kind of useless, too.

            If you don't have the possibility to translate your whole website and you want to add those pages where you don't have any translation put at least a GERMAN url on the page. Then you can explain in short terms that this page is only existing in english language and refer them to the english dependant - or even put in the Google translation widget (but we all know that this is  not a perfect translation at all, but better than nothing).

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • ThomasHgenhaven
              ThomasHgenhaven last edited by Feb 23, 2011, 2:45 PM Feb 21, 2011, 4:04 PM

              Hi there

              I don't really see any usability nor seo reasons for using English keywords in your folders. Why not just translate it all into German? That is, in my opinion, the best long term strategy.

              You are probably considering keeping the folders in English because it is easier. But it is a thing you'd probably want to change eventually. So although it is a hassle, you can aswell get it done 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • ninjamarketer
                ninjamarketer last edited by Feb 21, 2011, 4:01 PM Feb 21, 2011, 4:00 PM

                As long as you launch the site on a domain with proper local TLD (.de in your case) and add locally targeted content you should be ok. If possible try to host the website in the same country you are targeting.

                Google has become much smarter in terms of detecting the geo local elements and it should serve the appropriate site on the SERP.

                As far the mixing languages goes, it would not be a wise thing to do because it could impact usability. Is there a specific reason on why you are translating only a few pages in German? I could relate to an example where one of my customers mixed English with a local language on the local TLD website. The bounce rate went to the roof and users did not like it. They complained about this on the support chats and web forms. The issue was fixed and the bounce rate went down.

                Amjath 1 Reply Last reply Feb 21, 2011, 6:36 PM Reply Quote 1
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