What is the ideal URL structure for a multi-language site?

[JaanMSonberg]

This post is deleted!

[JaanMSonberg]

Just thought I'd update the question

[adammason]

HI Jaan

I know this question is old now but I thought I may be able to help if it is still unsolved.

I had a similar client with a site that had to cater for several languages and there is a certain way to go about it.

You can use a certain type of meta tag that informs Google and other Search Engines that you have other pages that are the same as the one they are currently on but serves it under a different language. This meta tag is the hreflang tag.

In your case you have the following URLS:

• dispak.ee/en/paperbags
• dispak.ee/fi/papperskassar
• dispak.ee/da/papirsposer

I am going to assume all these posts serve the same content in different languages. Now take the first URL (English) I would add the following meta tag to the page

What this does is it tells Google that there is different languages versions of this page in different locations. I have also kept the language in the URL just to make it clearly for users. I hope this helps you understand what needs to be done. If you want details on how to fully implement href lang then check out the details here. You can also add hreflang by adding it to the sitemap, details here.

To answer your other question, I would remove the other elements from longer URLs yes. Keyword rich URLs do not affect SEO massively and it will keep it much clearer for your visitors.

I hope this helps.

[JaanMSonberg]

Hi Adam,

Awesome information, thanks a lot! Just to clarify - the (for example danish) homepage in this case is actually: dispak.ee/da/ - I would then use that for hreflang, right? /da/papirsposer is the main category for products.

Also, would you suggest sticking with /da/, or renaming /da/ to the main keyword in that language (papirsposer) ? In that case, I would have to rename the main category for products to "products". So the url structure would look like this:

dispak.ee/papirsposer/products

instead of:

dispak.ee/da/papirsposer

Thanks a lot!

[adammason]

Hi Jaan

Yes that's right, you can use hreflang on the homepage also. I would recommend to use the links I provided to make sure the code is exactly how Google describes.

I'm not sure what you mean by your second question but I would keep your category structure as follows:

Category URL: http://dispak.ee/en/paperbags/

Product URL: http://dispak.ee/en/paper-product/

Doing it this way keeps the URL shorter and removes any issues with duplicate products under several categories. If you cannot do this then there is no major issue having the category name in the URL also, I just prefer to keep URLs short.

I hope this helps.