URLs in Greek, Greeklish or English? What is the best way to get great ranking?
-
Hello all,
I am Greek and I have a quite strange question for you.
Greek characters are generally recognized as special characters and need to have UTF-8 encoding.
The question is about the URLs of Greek websites.
According the advice of Google webmasters blog we should never put the raw greek characters into the URL of a link. We always should use the encoded version if we decide to have Greek characters and encode them or just use latin characters in the URL. Having Greek characters un-encoded could likely cause technical difficulties with some services, e.g. search engines or other url-processing web pages.
To give you an example let's look at
A) http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%B2%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1which is the URL with the encoded Greek characters and it shows up in the browser asB) http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ελβετία
The problem with A is that everytime we need to copy the URL and paste it somewhere (in an email, in a social bookmark site, social media site etc) the URL appears like the A, plenty of strange characters and %. This link sometimes may cause broken link issues especially when we try to submit it in social networks and social bookmarks.
On the other hand, googlebot reads that url but I am wondering if there is an advantage for the websites who keep the encoded URLs or not (in compairison to the sites who use Greeklish in the URLs)!
So the question is:
For the SEO issues, is it better to use Greek characters (encoded like this one http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%95%CE%BB%CE%B2%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1) in the URLs or would it be better to use just Greeklish (for example http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvetia ?
Thank you very much for your help!
Regards,
Lenia
-
Hi Tom,
I really appreciate your detailed answer.
You give a lot of information here. Thanks.
Taking into account the 3 main points you mention I would go with the Greeklish.
I think I should provide explanations about the term Greeklish. The official language of Greece is modern Greek. Modern Greek has a specific alphabet and it is not the same as the latin alphabet. On the other hand when a Greek person write Greek words by using the latin alphabet, then that is called Greeklish (Greek + english). It is a quick and easy way to write mms, imessages without paying attention on the orthography.
A URL in Greeklish is understandable by people in Greece => it can be considered as localised URL
A URL in Greeklish can easily be shared with no particular technical implications.
On the other hand the wikipedia articles use the encoded Greek Characters in the URL.
Well, I think if the SEO benefit is not that big, I would go with the Greeklish solutions.
I would be glad to have the feedback of other experts about that subject.
Tom thank you very much!
Regards,
Lenia
-
This is a really good question, Lenia. Really, really good, in fact.
Let's break this down into a number of factors:
Having localised URLs (by that I mean URLs, written in the country's language) - From an SEO perspective, I do believe there is some correlation that having localised URLs helps to rank higher, in the same way that having a keyword in the URL may help - having this keyword in the country's language would, by default, work the same way. However, the SEO benefit of doing so isn't that big, I'd see it as only a little boost, so I wouldn't let the SEO side weigh too heavily on your decision.
Now, having localised URLs for a user perspective is something that I think is very useful. I'd see it as a bigger plus for a user than I would for SEO purposes. I think having localised URLs shows the user that you're a part of that country, not just a larger corporation with an international presence but no real interest in the country for example. I think it helps users recognise and anticipate what the URLs would be for their user journey as well. Also, (I don't know how relative this might be for you) but having localised URLs can definitely help for offline campaigns and promotion. Say you were running some newspaper or billboard ads and you wanted to track how many people were then visiting your site as a result, you might want to setup a custom URL or search term for the campaign. So, you're newspaper advert would have "Visit www.domain.com/customURLhere/" on it. This would look infinitely better if it was written in the localised language (although I suppose you could always setup a 301 redirect for the URL).
Ultimately, however, I think you're decision should largely be influenced on the technical implications. The SEO value would be slight, but not that significant whichever method you choose. I would go with whatever solution would be easiest for you technically - it sounds like it would be easier to accommodate user and SEO factors, rather than having to accommodate technical factors for a slight SEO gain.
Just my input on the issue, and so I'd love to hear more from others on it - as I think it's a great question which could do with the input of some of the talented folk here.
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
-
Intentional Duplicate Content - Great UX, Bad for Ranking?
I'll try to keep this as clear and high level as possible. Thank you in advance for any and all help! We're managing a healthcare practice which specializes in neurosurgical treatments. As the practice is rather large, the doctors have several "specialties" in which they focus in, i.e. back surgery, facial surgery, brain surgery, etc. They have a main website (examplepractice.com) which holds ALL of their content on each condition and treatment in which they deal with. So, if someone enters their main homepage they will see conditions and treatments for all the specialties categorized together. However, linked within the main site are "mini-sites" for each specialty (same domain, same site) (examplepractice.com/brain-surgery), but with a different navigation menu to give the illusion of "separate website". These mini-sites are then tailored from a creative, content and UX perspective to THAT specific group of treatments and conditions. Now, anyone who enters this minisite will find information pertaining to only that specialty. The mini-sites are NOT set up as folders, but rather just a system of URLs that we have mapped out to each page. We set up the pages this way to maintain an exclusive feel for the site. Instead of someone drilling into a specific condition and having the menu change, we created the copies. But, because of how this is set up, we now have duplicate content for each treatment and condition child page (one on the main site, one on the minisite). My question (finally) is will this cause a problem in the future? Are we essentially splitting the "juice" between these two pages? Are we making it easier for our competitors to outrank us? We know this layout makes sense from the perspective of a user, but we're unclear how to move forward from a search perspective. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | frankmassanova1 -
Canonical sitemap URL different to website URL architecture
Hi, This may or may not be be an issue, but would like some SEO advice from someone who has a deeper understanding. I'm currently working on a clients site that has a bespoke CMS built by another development agency. The website currently has a sitemap with one link - EG: www.example.com/category/page. This is obviously the page that is indexed in search engines. However the website structure uses www.example.com/page, this isn't indexed in search engines as the links are canonical. The client is also using the second URL structure in all it's off and online advertising, internal links and it's also been picked up by referral sites. I suspect this is not good practice... however I'd like to understand whether there are any negative SEO effectives from this structure? Does Google look at both pages with regard to visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. and combine the data OR just use the indexed version? www.example.com/category/page - 63.5% of total pageviews
Technical SEO | | MikeSutcliffe
www.example.com/page - 34.31% of total pageviews Thanks
Mike0 -
URL Parameters
On our webshop we've added some URL-parameters. We've set URL's like min_price, filter_cat, filter_color etc. on "don't Crawl" in our Google Search console. We see that some parameters have 100.000+ URL's and some have 10.000+ Is it better to add these parameters in the robots.txt file? And if that's better, how can we write it down so the URL's will not be crawled. Our robotos.txt files shows now: # Added by SEO Ultimate's Link Mask Generator module User-agent: * Disallow: /go/ # End Link Mask Generator output User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO1 -
What is the best way to handle these duplicate page content errors?
MOZ reports these as duplicate page content errors and I'm not sure the best way to handle it. Home
Technical SEO | | ElykInnovation
http://myhjhome.com/
http://myhjhome.com/index.php Blog
http://myhjhome.com/blog/
http://myhjhome.com/blog/?author=1 Should I just create 301 redirects for these? 301 http://myhjhome.com/index.php to http://myhjhome.com/ ? 301 http://myhjhome.com/blog/?author=1 to http://myhjhome.com/ ? Or is there a better way to handle this type of duplicate page content errors? and0 -
Overly Dynamic URLs
I have a site that I use to time fitness events and I like to post the results using query strings. I create a link to each event's results/gallery/etc. I don't need these pages crawled and I don't want them to hurt my seo. Can I put a "do not crawl" meta on them or will that hurt my overall positioning? What are my other options?
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
How do I use only one URL
my site can be reach by both www.site.com and site.com. How do I make it only use www?
Technical SEO | | Weblion0 -
Keywords in Vanity URL
If I set up a vanity URL that just 301's to the main site, do the search engines look at the keywords in the vanity URL when determing how to rank the site. For example, if I set up a vanity URL of www.coolnewtechgear.com, and redirect it to www.company.com/products/, would the search engines view the keywords of cool, new, tech, and gear and associate that with the page it's getting redirected to? Or does it ignore the vanity URL and only look at the content of the page itself?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0 -
What's the best way to switch over to a new site with a different CMS?
Is it better to 301 or to closely duplicate each page URL when switching over to a new website from an established site with good ranking and a different CMS ( Drupal switching to Wordpress)?
Technical SEO | | OhYeahSteve0