undefined
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. 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
21.5k
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 May 18, 2013, 8:21 PM

    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 Aug 6, 2021, 1:09 PM

      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
      • topic:timeago_earlier,3 years
      • carpeto
        carpeto Subscriber last edited by Aug 28, 2018, 6:29 AM Aug 28, 2018, 6:29 AM

        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
        • topic:timeago_earlier,5 years
        • pikka
          pikka @Aleyda last edited by Jul 21, 2013, 4:29 PM Jul 21, 2013, 4:29 PM

          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
          • topic:timeago_earlier,about a month
          • Aleyda
            Aleyda last edited by Jun 17, 2013, 5:22 AM Jun 17, 2013, 5:22 AM

            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 Jul 21, 2013, 4:29 PM Reply Quote 1
            • topic:timeago_earlier,28 days
            • pikka
              pikka @firstconversion last edited by May 20, 2013, 4:58 PM May 20, 2013, 4:58 PM

              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 May 20, 2013, 1:18 PM May 20, 2013, 1:18 PM

                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 May 20, 2013, 4:58 PM Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  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 | Oct 7, 2024, 4:35 PM | gxpl09
                  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 | Mar 31, 2015, 10:03 AM | Webpresence
                  0
                • WebGain

                  Direct traffic is up 2100% (due to a bot/crawler I believe)

                  Hi, The direct traffic to website www.webgain.dk has increased by over 2100% recently. I can see that most of it is from US (my target audience is in Denmark and the website is in danish).
                  What can I do about this? All this traffic gives my website a bounce rate of 99.91% for direct traffic. I believe it is some sort of bot/crawler. 2100percentboost.png

                  International SEO | Jul 8, 2014, 4:36 PM | WebGain
                  0
                • Alex.Weintraub

                  Auto-Redirecting Homepage on Multilingual Site

                  The website has an auto-redirecting homepage on a multilingual site. Here is some background: User visits the site for first time > sent to javascript age verification page with country of origin selector. If selects "France" then served French page (.com/fr-fr/). If selects any other country, then served English page (.com/en-int/). A cookie is set, and next time the user visits the site, they are automatically served the appropriate language URL. 1st Question: .com/ essentially does not exist. It is being redirected to .com/en-int/ as this is the default page. Should this be a 301 redirect since I want this to serve as the new homepage? 2nd Question:. In the multilingual sitemap, should I still set .com/ as the hreflang="x-default" even though the user is automatically redirected to a language directory? According to Google, as just released here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html "automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content. Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users." So, this is where I am not clear.  If use a 302 redirect of .com/ to either .com/en-int/ or .com/fr-fr/, won't I then lose the inbound link value and DA/PA of .com/ if I just use a 302? Note: there is no .com/ at this moment. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks,Alex

                  International SEO | May 22, 2014, 4:28 PM | Alex.Weintraub
                  0
                • JonClark15

                  What are the best practices for translation of city/state names for international SEO? (ie. New York in English vs. Nueva York in Spanish)

                  I'm working on international SEO / translation of a global travel site. While we have a global keyword research and translation strategy in process for each market they serve, I've run into a unique question. Overall, we are translating (and localizing) content for each market but aren't sure what to do with location names. Each country/state has cities and locations that have their own dedicated pages. I see three options for these location names (when titling a page and writing content):  keep them in English, translate the names in the market languages, or use a combination of the two. The challenge with altering the location names to the market languages is that they are truly not known by those names. Though there are some instances where it may make sense…for instance **New York **in Spanish would be "Nueva York" with **‘**Nueva' being the Spanish translation of ‘new’. There are other instances, where no translation exists. If you’ve had a similar experience I'd love to hear your approach/recommendation.

                  International SEO | Sep 13, 2013, 10:06 AM | JonClark15
                  0
                • forex-websites

                  For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br

                  Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.

                  International SEO | Aug 21, 2013, 8:04 PM | forex-websites
                  0
                • imoney

                  Thai Characters in URL's

                  Does anyone have experience with non-Latin characters in URL's? We've launched a website in Thailand and picked Thai characters for URL's. However, when you copy it, it turns into something like this: http://www.imoneythailand.com/บัตรเครดิต Can it impact our website's crawlability? Also, is keyword in URL a ranking factor for non-Latin languages? Thanks in advance for help!

                  International SEO | Aug 14, 2013, 4:21 AM | imoney
                  0
                • APICDA

                  Website Translation

                  Hi All, I know its not an SEO question, but....................... Can anyone suggest a few good website translation "widgets" I  would like to give those who are not fluent in English and option to choose another language in which to view the page text. Thank You!!!

                  International SEO | Dec 1, 2011, 3:14 PM | APICDA
                  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.