One site two languages - what to do with urls?
-
Hi,
We are working with a client who has a Spanish site which is in English and Spanish, what is the best url structure to go for?
www.domain.es and en.domain.es
or www.domain.es and www.domain.es/en
or none of the above?
-
I would agree with Dean just to explain that the reason www.domain.es/en is better than en.domain.es is because the /en keeps the authority in your site rather than separating to a sub domain which sort of helps you a bit.
-
Personally I use the folder structure ie. www.domain.es and www.domain.es/en.
Good posts on moz here: The International SEO Checklist And Using the Correct Hreflang Tag: A New Generator Tool
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
-
Combining Two Sites With Similar Domain Authority
Hello, We run two sites with the same product, product descriptions and url structure. Essentially, the two sites are the same except for domain name and minor differences on the home pages. We've run this way for quite a few years. Both sites have a domain authority of 48 and there are not a large number of duplicate incoming links. I understand the "book" to say we should combine the sites with 301's to the similar pages. I am concerned about doing this because "site 2" still does about 20% of our business. We have been losing organic traffic for a number of years. I think this mainly has to do with a more competitive environment. However, where google used to serve both our sites for a search term it now will only show one. How much organic benefit should we see if we combine. Will it be significant enough to merge the two sites. Understandably, I realize the future can't be predicted but I would like to know if anyone has had a similar experience or opinion Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ffctas0 -
Will two navigation components (one removed by Javascript) impact Google rankings?
We are trying to eliminate tedium when developing complexly designed responsive navigations for mobile, desktop and tablet. The changes between breakpoints in our designs are too complex to be handled with css, so we are literally grabbing individual elements with javascript and moving them around. What we'd like to do instead is have two different navigations on the page, and toggle which one is on the DOM based on breakpoint. These navigations will have the same links but different markup. Will having two navigation components on the page at page load negatively impact our Google SEO rankings or potential to rank, even if we are removing one or the other from the DOM with JavaScript?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CaddisInteractive0 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Combining two existing sites into a single magento install
Hi, We run an online beauty ecommerce store and recently acquired one of our competitors. Their site runs on magento also, and they sell 70% the same product as us. We plan to merge the new site into our existing magento install but keep both sites looking exactly as they do now with different themes, different product names, product descriptions, product prices, category structures etc. In theory the customer would have no idea both sites from the same magento, they will look just as they do now. My question is, will google possibly slap the SERP's of either sites because we have combined them onto the same server and same magento install, even though nothing on either site actually changed on the front end. Both sites already have the same ownership information on the domain WHOIS, and a quick company search would reveal that we legally own both businesses under the same company. So it's not something we are trying to hide, we are open about it, and plan to continue running both sites long term, with each site being targeted to a slightly difference audience, with 30% different products at different price points. Has anyone done this before? Was there any SEO risks or SERP drops? Would love some advice on this matter before we make the move, the possible blow back is way too massive to do it without firm advice saying the risk is very low. Brad.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rec1230 -
Site Navigation
Hi Mozzers, I am an SEO at uncommongoods.com and looking for your opinion on our site nav. Currently our nav & URLs are structured in 3 levels. From the top level down, they are: 1. Category ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden 2. Subcat ex: http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath 3. Family ex:http://www.uncommongoods.com/home-garden/bed-bath/bath-accessories Right now, all levels are accessible from our top nav but we are considering removing the family pages. If we did that, Google could still find & crawl links to the family pages, but they would have to drill down to the subcat pages to find them. Do you guys think this would help or hurt our SEO efforts? Thanks! -Zack
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
Redirect micro-niche site to bigger niche site?
I have a micro niche site that performs reasonably well (page 1 at least) for it's main keywords. It is an exact match domain. To save the ongoing maintenance of a site that gets less than 10 visitors a day, I was thinking of redirecting this micro niche site to a bigger site (a niche site that the micro niche fits into, if that makes sense!) Would I lose rankings because of the power that the EMD provided? Would it be better keeping it there for the backlink it provides to the bigger site (although on the same C Class IP)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigMiniMan0 -
Should I shorten my urls?
For my informational site I have a lot of urls that are way too long. When I first created the site, I wrote a script that takes out the common words of a post and fashions a url. So, for example, if the first few words of a question were: Hi there, I have a question about back pain. I'm wondering what drugs would be good for relief and how I can get some help? then my url may be: www.mydomain.com/question?id=123-question-back-pain-wondering-drugs-good-relief-how-get-some-help Once I got learning about seo I realized that these urls were too long but I never did anything about them. Should I be shortening these, or is my time best spent doing something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes2