Best practice for URL - Language/country
-
Hi,
We are planning on having our website localized into more languages. We already have an English and German version. The German version is currently a sub-domain:
www.example.com --> English version
de.example.com --> German version
Is this recommended? Or is it always better to have URLs with language prefixes such a:
Which is a better practice in terms of SEO?
-
Hi Peter,
Both really good answers to your questions above but maybe it would be good to give you some further pointing in the right direction. Perhaps you could answer the questions below and I can give you my personal opinion on which method would be best:
-
will you be putting an equal amount of marketing (content, PR, etc.) into the Spanish version for example compared with English?
-
are you able to offer fully localised service eg, Spanish customer service, Spanish sales team etc.?
-
is your company well-known globally?
It's important not to also forget that another option is using ccTLDs (eg, .co.uk, .com.au). These give the highest signal to search engines about the country being targeted and also importantly make you look more "local" which can do wonders for increasing conversion rate in countries where your company is not well-known.
-
-
I think that Tom gave you one of the best answers possible.
However I hope this helps your site structure should be very similar to one contained in the two URL's
If I may add a little bit of information that I thought was helpful
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/hreflang-101-how-to-avoid-international-duplication/
WHERE TO ADD YOUR HREFLANG TAGS
You can add hreflang tags to your sitemaps, in the HTTP response headers, or on the page itself.
IN YOUR SITEMAPS
The best place to add hreflang is in your sitemap as including them in the headers or on the page adds weight to every single page request.
The following example will inform Google about the English version from the German version of the website:
<url> <loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc></url>
<xhtml:link< span=""> rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” href=”http://www.example.com/english/” /> <xhtml:link < span="">rel=”alternate” hreflang=”de” href=”http://www.example.com/deutsch/” /></xhtml:link <></xhtml:link<>
This method would need to be repeated in full for every page on the site and for all the international websites.
IN YOUR HEADERS AND HTML
Hreflang tags can also be added to the HTTP header:
Link: http://www.example.com/english/; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”en” Link: http://www.example.com/deutsch/; rel=”alternate”; hreflang=”de”
Or in the tag in the HTML:
http://www.example.com/english/” /> http://www.example.com/deutsch/
& because you will be creating a new site
https://www.candidsky.com/blog/the-seo-2015-guide-to-website-migration/
it would come down to your backlink profile if it were me I would use
Moz open site Explorer, Majestic, Ahrefs and Google Webmaster tools to determine whether or not I will be receiving a enough Backlinks for a subdomain or separate TLD otherwise I would use a subfolder and an extremely fast method of hosting the site Fastly is excellent or many other great methods as well.
Hope this helps,
Tom
PS use
http://hreflang.ninja/ to check
-
Hi Peter
Both are viable options.
I'd highly recommend going through Aleyda Solis' international SEO posts here on the Moz blog. They can teach how to prepare for international SEO, how to approach site structure and how to generate relevant code and hreflang tags.
Here is her international SEO checklist
Here is her Hreflang blog post and generator tool
And 40 tools to help advance your international SEO
They're great reading and nothing that I'd be able to do add to, so I hope this helps!
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
-
Hey all -- ever seen a client with URLs that keep repeating the domain? Something like: client.com/client.com/client.com/subfolder-name. Any idea what glitch could cause that?
Hey all -- ever seen a client with URLs that keep repeating the domain? Something like: client.com/client.com/client.com/subfolder-name. Any idea what glitch could cause that?
Technical SEO | | TDC_SEO0 -
Duplicate content pages on different domains, best practice?
Hi, We are running directory sites on different domains of different countries (we have the country name in the domain name of each site) and we have the same static page on each one, well, we have more of them but I would like to exemplify one static page for the sake of simplicity. So we have http://firstcountry.com/faq.html, http://secondcountry.com/faq.html and so on for 6-7 sites, faq.html from one country and the other have 94% similarity when checked against duplicate content. We would like an alternative approach to canonical cause the content couldn´t belong to only one of this sites, it belongs to all. Second option would be unindex all but one country. It´s syndicated content but we cannot link back to the source cause there is none. Thanks for taking the time in reading this.
Technical SEO | | seosogood0 -
Best practice to handle Wordpress Categories/Tags
Hello Mozzers, I am sure a lot of people here are using wordpress. How do you handle Categories & Tags? I came across that they produce a lot of duplicate content in the google index. My website is brand new so I don't have any traffic yet, how would you handle it? noindex, follow? Or block /categories/ and /tags/ from robots.txt? Probably I am completely wrong with both ways? I am grateful for your answers! Best regards!
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
Duplicated content in moz report due to Magento urls in a multiple language store.
Hi guys, Moz crawl is reporting as duplicated content the following urls in our store: http://footdistrict.com and http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es The chain: ___store=footdistrict_es is added as you switch the language of the site. Both pages have the http://footdistrict.com" /> , but this was introduced some time after going live. I was wondering the best action to take considering the SEO side effects. For example: Permanent redirect from http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es to http://footdistrict.com. -> Problem: If I'm surfing through english version and I switch to spanish, apache will realize that http://footdistrict.com?___store=footdistrict_es is going to be loaded and automatically it will redirect you to http:/footdistrict.com. So you will stay in spanish version for ever. Deleting the URLS with the store code from Google Web Admin tools. Problem: What about the juice? Adding those URL's to robots.txt. Problem: What about the juice? more options? Basically I'm trying to understand the best option to avoid these pages being indexed. Could you help here? Thanks a lot.
Technical SEO | | footd0 -
Best practice for author tags: G+ personal or G+ company page?
I work for a company that has a corporate G+ page. I have a personal G+ page. When I write articles for the company blog there are 2 questions that come up: (1) for the rel="author" tag within the blog posting on the company's blog, should I reference my personal G+ page, or the company's G+ page as the author? (2) which G+ page, mine or my company's, should share the link to the blog posting on the company's site? Or should both share it? My goal is to build up author rank for either me or the company I work for (don't care which) so that after a while the Google organic search listing will include the author thumbnail if the article ranks for the search query. I don't care if the thumbnail is me or my company; just trying to figure out how to best link everything to maximize the chance of getting an author thumbnail in the search rankings. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
How best to deal with www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html
Firstly, this is for an .asp site - and all my usual ways of fixing this (e.g. via htaccess) don't seem to work. I'm working on a site which has www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html - both URL's resolve to the same page/content. If I simply drop a rel canonical into the page, will this solve my dupe content woes? The canonical tag would then appear in both www.home.com and www.home.com/index.html cases. If the above is Ok, which version should I be going with? - or - Thanks in advance folks,
Technical SEO | | Creatomatic
James @ Creatomatic0 -
Shorter URLs
Hi Is there a real value in having the keywords in the URL structure? we could use the URL: Mybrand.com/software/tablets/ipad/supertrader.html Or instead have the CMS create the shorter version mybrand.com/supertrader.html and just optimize this page for the keyword 'supertrader ipad software'
Technical SEO | | FXDD1 -
Optimal / Best Practice Title tag
Hi Guys, Am I write in saying google will take / create many variable from your title tag? Graphic, Web Design and Online Marketing in Ireland | Company Name results: Graphic Design, Web design, Web design in Ireland, Online Marketing in Ireland, Online Marketing, Graphic and Web Design, etc etc. (plus lots of long tail there as well). Would this be considered the optimal way as 'Design' is the common denominator for Graphic & Web. Then Ireland can be common to every other keyword such as Graphic design, Web design, Online Marketing. (in ireland) The reason why I ask is: lately I've notice title tags being stuffed with keywords and don't actually read correctly in the SERP My suggested way could have more benefits plus it reads well. Your thoughts, thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0