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!
-
Thanks to all for your input! I am thinking we will try translating URLs in one language to test the impact. Thanks again
-
Definitely agree translating the URLs is a must. Having keywords in your URL can aid your SEO efforts so it makes sense for the keywords to be in the language of the country you are targeting with the translated content.Certainly if I looked at SERPs for an English language search but found the URLs written in a foreign lanaguage I would not click on that search result as it instantly looks rather strange or even spammy.
-
I agree with Toshi one hundred percent. It's strongly recommended to change it. I'd say it's crucial you do it. There's absolutely no reason to not do it.
-
If you're already translating the content, it makes sense to translate the URLs as well as part of the process. Think about it, for a non-English speaker the English URLs are effectively gibberish. It would be like if you were given a URL that was in Chinese or Korean. Aside from being a poor user experience, it's not optimal from an SEO perspective as well, as keywords are going to change from language to language, so keeping the English words doesn't make sense.
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
-
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Tags for Multi-Regional Website English Language Only having URL Parameters
Dear friends, We have a multi-regional website in English language only having the country selector on the top of each page and it adds countrycode parameters on each url. Website is built in Magento 1.8 and having 1 store with multiple store views. There is no default store set in Magento as I discussed with developer. Content is same for all the countries and only currency is changed. In navigation there are urls without url parameters but when we change store from any page it add parameters in the url for same page hence there are total 7 URLs. 6 URLs for each page (with country parameters) and 1 master url (without parameters) and making content duplicity. We have implemented hreflang tags on each page with url parameters but for canonical we have implemented master page url as per navigation without url parameters Example on this page. I think this is correct for master page but we should use URL parameters in canonical tags for each counry url too and there should be only 1 canonical tag on each country page url. Currently all the country urls are having master page canoncial tag as per the example. Please correct me if I am wrong and **in this case what has to be done for master page? **as google is indexing the pages without parameters too. We are also using GEOIP redirection for each store with country IP detection and for rest of the countries which are not listed on the website we are redirecting to USA store. Earlier it was 301 but we changed it to 302. Hreflang tags are showing errors in SEMRush due to redirection but in GWT it's OK for some pages it's showing no return tags only. Should I use **x-default tags for hreflang and country selector only on home page like this or should I remove the redirection? **However some of the website like this using redirection but header check tool doesn't show the redirection for this and for our website it shows 302 redirection. Sorry for the long post but looking for your support, please.
International SEO | | spjain810 -
Duplicate Content Regarding Translated Pages
If we have one page in English, and another that is translated into Spanish, does google consider that duplicate content? I don't know if having something in a different language makes it different or if it will get flagged. Thanks, Ruben
International SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
External URLs in hreflang sitemap questions
I'm currently putting together an international sitemap for a website that has an set up like the following: example.com/us
International SEO | | Guyboz
example.com/au
example.com/ca
example.co.uk
example.se I'm planning on including the hreflang tags within sitemaps for each domain, to make sure google serves up the right version. However, I'm a bit sceptical about including the non .com domains within the .com sitemap - and the other way round for .co.uk and .se sitemaps. The way I've been doing it follows the following example: <url><loc>http://www.example.com/us/</loc></url> Putting in the .co.uk and .se domains within the .com sitemap just doesn't feel right - is this actually the right way to do it? Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
Should I include language specific characters in the URL?
So a client's site is to be set up like this: domain.com
International SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey
domain.co.uk
domain.de
domain.fr
domain.pl The question is, on the non english language sites, which would be more likely to rank? domain.de/über or domain.de/ueber Thanks!0 -
I have on site translated into several languages on different TLDs, .com, .de, .co.uk, .no, etc. Is this duplicate content?
Three of the sites are English (.co.uk, .com, .us) as well as foreign (.de, .no, etc.) - are these all seen as having duplicate content on every site? They're hosted under the same EpiServer backend system if this helps. But I am still copying and pasting content over each site, and translating where necessary, so I'm concerned this is indexed as being large amounts of duplicate content. Site traffic doesn't appear to be suffering but as I'm currently putting together new SEOs strategies, I want to cover this possibility. Any advice on ensuring the sites aren't penalised appreciated!
International SEO | | hurtigruten0 -
Backlinks to rewrite urls and russian cyrilic characters
Dear Mozers, I've been tried different methods for backlink building and I need some help in order to make it clear in my mind. I have a multilingual website. Also it has russian language which is our basic market. My main keyword is(Недвижимость в Греции) which means Properties in Greece and of course I target my russian first page which has url rewrite (because I have to include my keywords in url) with cyrrilic characters - http://www.halkidikiproperties.com/ru/халкидики-недвижимость-греции/. As I see these backlinks doesn't appear in seomoz tool and there is no improvment in link analysis tab. Do I have to target better my home page than this url rewrited page or maybe do I have to target www.halkidikiproperties.com/ru/ which is the main russian page but before the url rewrite? Also as I see my competitors targeting their homepage without any rewrite but they are not multilingual. Do I have to analyze better this specific rewrited-url by using Link analysis tool? Is it possible to analyze a specific url? Thank a lot , It will be really helpful your assistance. Regards, George
International SEO | | elgreco0 -
French Canadian Website and French Language URLs
Hello, One of my clients has a question on a new Quebec, Canada version of their website. The website content and copy is in the French Canadian language, but the IT Director has asked if, for the purpose of SEO, should the URLs be in French as well? So, this questions has two parts... For SEO, should the URL's be in French or left in English, to avoid crawl errors? For visitor UX, is there any reason to have them in French versus English?
International SEO | | Aviatech0 -
Is it worth to have a DNS manage service like easydns or ultradns in terms of seo ?
I have a HTML site hosted in Netherlands, i use Could Files from Rackspace and Cloudfront from Amazon as CDN. My target audience are in Portugal Is it worth to have a DNS Manage service in terms of seo? If so what are the benefits? Thank you Paulo
International SEO | | paulogoncalves0