Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
-
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.
-
Thank you so much Neil! That helps!!
-
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
-
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
-
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).
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Multi National Company that Doesn't Want to Implement International SEO
I have got an interesting situation where I have a client who wants to merge two ccTLD's into one. They currently have .fi and .com and they want to merge both sites to .com .fi is for finland and .com for USA. They want to merge the sites and the original plan was to use subfolders for each country and pair with hreflang. However the team now wants to merge both sites with NO subfolders differentiating between finland or the US. My understanding of International SEO that this is the most opposite from best practices, but is there any specific reasons why they wouldn't want to do this? I'm struggling to find any specific reasons that I can cite to the client that would argue why we should at least do a subfolder or some sort of international seo strategy.
International SEO | | JKhoo1 -
Redirected traffic and SEO problem
Hi all, I have a bit of a search engine predicament and I can't find the answer anywhere. It's a bit of a complicated one so please bear with me 🙂 ... I'm a Freelance Copywriter, I recently started the business, I've also recently moved to New Zealand. As such I'm looking for business back in the U.K. (As that's where my network is), but also locally, in NZ. I've purchased both the .co.uk and .co.nz domain names (http://www.inspirecontent.co.uk and http://www.inspirecontent.co.nz) The way that the domain provider / host has set these up is for one to redirect to another. Currently if someone visits www.inspirecontent.co.nz it redirects to the U.K. Site. That's less than ideal for me, because I dont want NZ traffic (i.e potential leads) to think I'm a U.K. Based business. my questions are as follows: 1. Will the redirect to the U.K. domain prevent me from appearing in NZ search (I.e if someone searches via google.co.nz) I'm really struggling to rank at the moment, I'm working on more content but if the redirect is a problem then I need to know about it so that I can find a work around. 2. Any suggestions on the best approach to the work around? It would be great if the URLs didn't change! So that you wind up from the U.K. on the U.K site, and if you're from NZ, you land on and stay on the NZ domain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. One option, I think, would be to have two different websites, hosted separately, but I hear that duplicated content is bad for SEO? Thanks all in advance Kind regards
International SEO | | Andrea_howey0 -
International advice.... can anyone help and check my site?
Hi ALL, I'm running 3 sites, internationally .com, com.au and co.nz Can anyone please look at my site and give me feedback about the hreflang tags, I ran a W3C and i have errors stating https://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fzenory.co.nz for www.zenory.com and its relevant domains
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
Redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO
Hi, I have two questions. Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect (301) the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons of this? Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords? Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I understand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate different language versions. My question is regarding subfolders. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should I also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder. Thanks in advance, Sam
International SEO | | Awaraman1 -
Translating URLs worth it?
My company has content in 23 different languages in 30+ countries. We translate page content but we don't translate URLs. I am trying to figure out whether it would be worth the considerable extra overhead to translate the URLs as well. I'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts of the Moz community. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | Logi0 -
International SEO with .com & ccTLD in the same language
I've watched http://www.seomoz.org/blog/intern... and read some other posts here. Most seem to focus on whether to use ccTLD, subdomains or subfolders. I'm already committed to expanding my US-based ecommerce to Canada with a .ca ccTLD. My question is around duplicate content as I take my .com USA ecommerce business to canada with a second site on a .ca URL. With the .com site's preference set to USA, and the .ca site's geo preference (automatically) set to Canada, is it a concern at all? About 80% of the content would be the same. FYI, .com ranks OK in Canada now and I want .ca to outrank it in Canada. I know 'localizing' content within the same language is important (independent of duplicate content), but this might not be viable in the short run given CMS limitations. Any direct experience to help quantify the impact here between US and Canadian ecommerce? Adding: I'm not totally confident here. From this google webmaster central post it seems that canonical tags aren't needed. I tend to think nothing is truly neutral and want to be confident regarding whether to use canonicals or not. Is it helpful, harmful or harmless? My site already has internal canonical tags and having internal and external would be a pain I think. @Eugene Byun used it successfully, but would the results have been the same without? Thanks!
International SEO | | gravityseo0 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0