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.
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.
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
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to SERPs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
International SEO | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Goal
We want local domains (be, ch, fr, etc.) to appear in SERPs and also comply with Google policy of local language variants and/or canonical links. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Issue
After Googlebot crawled the websites we see lot of “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Coverage/Excluded report (Google Search Console) for most domains. When we inspect some of those URLs we can see Google has decided that canonical URL points to (example): User-declared canonical: None
Google-selected canonical: …same page, but on a different domain Strange is that even those URLs are on Google and can be found in SERPs. Obviously Google doesn’t know what to make of it. We noticed many websites in the same scenario use a self-referencing approach which is not really “kosher” - we are afraid if we use the same approach we can get penalized by Google. Question: What do you suggest to fix the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in our scenario? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
International SEO - how likely is it autoredirect via IP Address will impact rankings?
Hello, We're looking to internationalise our site so that US visitors will see the US branded version while everyone else will see the global version (currently at .com). This question specifically is about location-based auto-redirects. The literature I've read (including Google) recommends against auto-redirection: "Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site." Insofar as I understand it the theory goes as follows. Google crawls mainly from the US Auto-redirecting by US IP to the US domain will also redirect the Googlebot crawlers Because of this the crawlers will only see the US site / domain and not original .com website Crawlers can't index what they can't see Drop in rankings for the original site However, one of my colleagues has pointed out to me a company which does use auto-redirects. If a user is in the UK and type in their website they will be redirected to the UK version of the site, US will be US etc. I have checked their rankings and they are still ranking highly for relevant terms. I have been asked why they have been able to do this without impacting their visibility. Any ideas? Given their success have the risks of auto-redirecting have been overstated? How can we ensure US visitors land on the correct internationalised domain without auto-redirects in place? Looking forward to your thoughts on this as well as your experiences. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
How to Localise per Region (Europe, America, APAC, EMEI) and not per country as best SEO practise?
Hi SEO expertises! I am currently working with a client that initially have an English website targeting UK users but want to expand their market into four new regions (Europe, America, APAC and EMEI) keeping English as a main language. I would like to request your help here as I told the client ISO location and hreflang it will be just possible per language and they must need to localise each English region with local keywords, however I would like to double check if it will be any way (Sitemap, Hreflang) we can tell Google we are targeting per region and not per country? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | | Atalig20 -
Redirect to 'default' or English (/en) version of site?
Hi Moz Community! I'm trying to work through a thorny internationalization issue with the 'default' and English versions of our site. We have an international set-up of: www.domain.com (in english) www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/en-gb www.domain.com/fr-fr www.domain.com/de-de and so on... All the canonicals and HREFLANGs are set up, except the English language version is giving me pause. If you visit www.domain.com, all of the internal links on that page (due to the current way our cms works) point to www.domain.com/en/ versions of the pages. Content is identical between the two versions. The canonical on, say, www.domain.com/en/products points to www.domain.com/products. Feels like we're pulling in two different directions with our internationalization signals. Links go one way, canonical goes another. Three options I can see: Remove the /en/ version of the site. 301 all the /en versions of pages to /. Update the hreflangs to point the EN language users to the / version. **Redirect the / version of the site to /en. **The reverse of the above. **Keep both the /en and the / versions, update the links on / version. **Make it so that visitors to the / version of the site follow links that don't take them to the /en site. It feels like the /en version of the site is redundant and potentially sending confusing signals to search engines (it's currently a bit of a toss-up as to which version of a page ranks). I'm leaning toward removing the /en version and redirecting to the / version. It would be a big step as currently - due to the internal linking - about 40% of our traffic goes through the /en path. Anything to be aware of? Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | MaxSydenham0 -
Spanish word as English domain name
hi anyine any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name. other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names. thanks
International SEO | | Arropa0 -
.com versus local domains
Hi all, One of my clients has local domain websites in various parts of the world (co.uk etc. etc.) and there has always been a discussion about where a move from local domain (the current set-up) to a targeted .com domain (i.e. .com/uk) would benefit from a SEO perspective. The main reasoning (seo-wise) that keeps coming up is that there'd only be one domain to link to which would help with link juice being passed around. Any thoughts as whether this would actually be the case or if this possible benefit would be outweighed by other cons? Recent moves (local to .com) from a few websites (the Guardian newspaper in the UK being the most recent one off the top of my head) has made me start thinking about it again! Diana
International SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
SEO for .com vs. .com.au websites
I have a new client from Australia who has a website on a .com.au domain. He has the same domain name registered for .com. Example: exampledomain.com.au, and exampledomain.com He started with the .com.au site for a product he offers in Australia. He's bringing the same product to the U.S. (it's a medical device product) and wants us to build a site for it and point to the .com. Right now, he has what appears is the same site showing on the .com as on the .com.au. So both domains are pointing to the same host, but there are separate sections or directories within the hosting account for each website - and the content is exactly the same. Would this be viewed as duplicate content by Google? What's the best way to structure or build the new site on the .com to get the best SEO in the USA, maintain the .au version and not have the websites compete or be viewed as having duplicate content? Thanks, Greg
International SEO | | gregelwell0 -
International (foreign language) URL's best practices
I'm curious if there is a benefit or best practice with regards to using the localized language on international sites (with specific ccTLDs). For example, should my french site (site.fr) use the french language as keywords within the URLs or should they be in english? e.g. www.site.fr/nourriture vs. www.site.fr/food Is that considered best practice for SEO (or just for brand perception those markets?). Is there a tangible loss in SEO if we do not use the correct language for those URLs and just stick with English around the world? I recall seeing a Matt Cutts video on the topic and he said that google does support i18n URL's but other SE's might not support them as gracefully but he didn't come down with a hard recommendation to go with i18n URL's or just English. Would love a strong ruling in favor one direction based on best practices.
International SEO | | mongillo0