Country/Language combination in subdirectory URL
-
Hello,
We are a multi country/multi lingual (English, Arabic) website. We are following a subdirectory structure to separate and geotarget the country/language combinations.
Currently our english and arabic urls are the same:
For UAE: example.com/ae (English Site)
For Saudi Arabic: example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia)
We want to separate the English and Arabic language URLs and I wanted to know if there is any preference as to which kind of URL structure we should go with :
example.com/ae-en (Country-Language)
example.com/en-ae (Language-Country)
example.com/ae/en (Country/Language)
Is there any logic to deciding how to structure the language/country combinations or is is entirely a matter of personal preference.
Thanks!
-
Hi Andy,
thanks for your help. Sorry I should I have been more clear with my question- We basically have the following sites set up as subdirectories:
example.com/ae (United Arab Emirates)
example.com/sa (Saudi Arabia)
example.com (International - not country specific)
ae, sa, om, qa, bh are country identifiers
language identifies are "en" for english and "ar" for arabic. (The English and Arabic URL for each country is currently the same)
Using these identifiers above should I make the country website URLs as follows ?:
example.com/ae-en (UAE English)
example.com/ae-ar(UAE Arabic)
example.com/sa-en(Saudi Arabia English)
example.com/sa-ar(Saudi Arabia Arabic)
... etc for the country sites
and example.com for the (International site)
example.com/ar for the (International Arabic Site)
-
Andy is spot on.
-
Hi Bejan,
Your chosen language should be sat at the primary domain.
For example, if your are a Saudi based site that wants Arabic as the primary language, this shouldn't be sat in an identifier. Ideally, you want to have a primary site language as this is how most will do it.
www.example.com (Arabic Language)
www.example.com/en/ (English Version)Or...
www.example.com (English Language)
www.example.com/ae/ (Arabic Version)You need to also remember to set these correctly by using HREFLANG. This is what will tell Google which languages should be associated to which pages. Moz have a couple of very useful pages on this here and here.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
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
-
How to Get google to get to index New URL and not the OLD url
Hi Team, We are undertaking a Domain migration activity to migrate our content frrom one domain to another. 1. the Redirection of pages is handeled at Reverse proxy level. 2. We do have 301 redirects put in place. However we still see that google is indexing pages with our Old domain apart from the pages from new domain. Is there a way for us to stop google from indexing our pages from Old domain. The recommendations to have Noindex on Page mete title and disallow does not work since our redirection is setup at RP and google crawlers always discover the new pages after redirection.
Local Website Optimization | | bhaskaran0 -
Help choosing ideal URL structure
Hi All, We are considering changing the link structure for the website of a large restaurant group, which represents about 100 restaurants in the USA. While I have some opinions, I'd very much welcome the opinions of some other seasoned SEO's as well. There are two options on the table for the link structure, which you can see below. The question is for restaurants with multiple locations, and how we structure those URLs. The main difference is whether we include the "/location/" of the URL, or if that is overkill? I suppose maybe it could have some value if someone is searching a term like "Bub City Location", with "location" right in the search. But otherwise, it just adds to the length of the URL, and I'm not sure if it'll bring any extra value... In this example, "bub-city" is the restaurant name, and "mb-financial-park" is one of the locations. Option A
Local Website Optimization | | SMQ
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city/location/mb-financial-park/ Option B
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city
http://leye.local/restaurant/bub-city/mb-financial-park/ Thoughts?0 -
How to use canonical tags/hreflang for a company in multiple English-speaking countries?
My company is a global company with locations in AU, UK, and USA. Each has their own website. For example, we have https://www.catskill.us (for the USA), a https://www.catskill.com.au (for the AU), and https://www.catskill.co.uk (for the UK). I have used both canonical tags and hreflang tags for our USA website to distinguish any duplicate content from our AU and UK websites. I am wondering if I used the canonical tags and hreflang tags appropriatley in the below example for our USA website. Is it the best way to avoid link value loss? | |
Local Website Optimization | | joseph.defranco
| | |
| | |
| | |0 -
International SEO - How to rank similar keys for differents countries
Hello MOZ friends.
Local Website Optimization | | NachoRetta
I work in an digital marketing agency in Argentina and since we have a lot of traffic from other Spanish-speaking countries like Mexico and Spain, we want to rank specific keywords for these countries.
We were thinking of putting new versions of the homepage in subfolders, for example /es/ for Spain, /mx/ to Mexico, etc. In these new subfolders we would place a very similar version of the homepage with a few minor modifications to work specific keywords in each country. For example, in Spain it is more searched "marketing online", and "marketing digital" is more used in Mexico and Argentina.
I have understood that to implement this we would be to place a label hrflang on the homepage directing visitors and crawlers to the correct version of each country. Is it ok?
Another concern is, whether they are very similar pages, Google does not take it as duplicate content ..
I read this:
https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
And i am not completely sure about using subfolders for each country, but i dont know how to position diferents keywords for diferent countries.
Regards,
Juan Ignacio Retta0 -
Local SEO - Adding the location to the URL
Hi there, My client has a product URL: www.company.com/product. They are only serving one state in the US. The existing URL is ranking in a position between 8-15 at the moment for local searches. Would it be interesting to add the location to the URL in order to get a higher position or is it dangerous as we have our rankings at the moment. Is it really giving you an advantage that is worth the risk? Thank you for your opinions!
Local Website Optimization | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Looking for resources (or personal tips/suggestions) on developing higher client conversion rates
I work for a local Canadian digital marketing company and we are seeking to expand our client base but are having difficulty with converting potential clients. We do excellent work and get good results across the board for our current customers. That being said, we can't seem to convert new ones at the rate we hope to. I am wondering what we are missing and would really like to see what has worked for others to see if we can augment our approach to be more successful. Any ideas are greatly appreciated! We are currently beating the competition on local SERPs, and rank very well nationally.
Local Website Optimization | | Toddfoster
We have run AdWords campaigns, attempted cold-calling, worked with website audits, worked with different sales funnel ideas, social media and done our share of outreach in both online and local communities, among other marketing moves. Tips on these topics are also welcome, because it is possible we just went about it the wrong way.0 -
How to target an established .co.uk site/blog to audiences in other English speaking countries - UAE, Singapore for example?
Excuse for the novice questions, but looking for help! 🙂 I have an established .co.uk website/blog for which I have established a good solid following in the UK over a good number of years. That said I have recently relocated to Dubai and so I am looking to target my English blog content to English speakers here and Singapore? While the language setting of my site is "en" is there anyway that I can change this to "en-ae" and "en-sg" for example to build a following in these markets? Or is my .co.uk TLD an issue that is going to hold me back from building following in these locations? I ask as I have just read the hreflang announcement from Google, but noticed in my Webmaster Tools that I get the following message: "Your site has no hreflang tags". Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | twofourseven0 -
Same blog, multiple languages. Got SEO concerns.
Hi, My company runs a small blog in swedish. Most of the visitors are our customers/prospects. We will write about generic concepts regarding our business and the occasional company news story. However, I have quite a few ideas for articles that could be interesting to a lot of people, and I'm tempted to write those in english for better exposure. I would love it if that exposure could boost my companies authority. How should I go on about this? Can I somehow tell search engines that a certain part or page of the site is in another language? Should I translate our entire site to english and post the english post in a separate blog feed? Any insight is welcome. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Mest0