Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites

[pikka]

Hi

I am wondering what the best URL format to use is when a website targets several countries, in several languages. (without owning the local domains, only a .com, and ideally to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains.)

As an example, to target a hotel in Sweden (Google.se) are there any MUST-HAVE indicators in the URL to target the relevant countries? Such as hotelsite.com**/se/**hotel-name. Would this represent the language? Or is it the location of the product?

To clarify a bit, I would like to target around 10 countries, with the product pages each having 2 languages (the local language + english). I'm considering using the following format:

hotelsite.com/en/hotel-name (for english) and

hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name (for swedish content of that same product)

and then using rel=”alternate” hreflang=”se-SV” markup to target the /se/ page for Sweden (Google.se) and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” for UK? And to also geotarget those in Webmaster tools using those /se/ folders etc.

Would this be sufficient? Or does there need to be an indicator of both the location, AND the language in the URLs? I mean would the URL's need to be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name/se-SV (for swedish) or can it just be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name?

Any thoughts on best practice would be greatly appreciated.

[firstconversion]

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-start-multilingual-site.html

Location and language ->  www.example.com/se/en/

S

[pikka]

Thanks for your reply, Stephen.

Is www.example.com/se/en/hotel-name the shortest, best possible way to do this?

So for the swedish language version it would be www.example.com/se/se/hotel-name (to keep the format consistent)?

[Aleyda]

Hi there!

To target countries the best way to go is with ccTLDs and if you don't have the ccTLDs then it is with subdirectories within a generic TLD, so you'll have:

• For the US: yourbrand.com/category-a/
• For the UK: yourbrand.com/en-gb/category-a/
• For Spain: yourbrand.com/es-es/categoria-a/
• For Mexico: yourbrand.com/es-mx/categoria-a/

Please keep in mind that the "name" of the directory here it's not important but is just to keep it usable and short and follow the language naming conventions. What it is important is that each country has its own consistent directory structure.

It's fundamental that the look and feel as well as all of the elements of each ones of your different country versions (in the different directories) are localized to target their audience: From the translation of the URLs, titles, descriptions, headings, text, etc. to the appropriate language, using the right currency, etc.

In order to geolocate each directory and inform Google that they're targeting different countries you can do it through Google Webmaster Tools with the "Geolocate" option by registering each directory independently and targeting it.

Additionally, if you have many country versions with the same language (US & UK or Spain & Mexico), in order to avoid having content duplication issues, informing Google that each one of these pages are in these languages but targeting different audiences you should use the hreflang tags as specified here.

By doing this you'll make sure you'll have the base set to target your different country search audiences with Google without running into content duplication issues.

For more information about how to establish and identify the best strategy to follow take a look at this post I wrote some time ago about International SEO strategy.

If you have any question just let me know!

[pikka]

Thanks Aleyda, this is great!

I'm wondering, if on a TLD, is it necessary to have both the country code and language in the URL? Or would it be possible to just use language and use href lang in the code to specify the where it's relevant?

I do have each venue in the local language AND in english (though I would prefer both of these languages aimed at the local country - this is because nobody outside the countries search for these venues, but many do also search in english rather than just their local lang)

I have:

• .com/se/sv/venue-name (Venue in Sweden, in Swedish)
• .com/se/en/venue-name (Venue in Sweden, in English)

Or is it better to just use language?

• .com/se-sv/venue-name
• (not sure how to do the english version here)

Would country code be more relevant to use in this case?

Thanks!

[carpeto]

hello,

Nice article. I have a questions:

If you have a multi lang site with Subdirectory:

would you use Subdirectory:
domain.com for the english version or its bertetr to use straight a redirect from domain.com to .com/en/ ?