Multi regional + multi lingual URLs

[DocdataCommerce]

We have made the decision to start using a new ecommerce platform, which means we will have to migrate our existing webshops. Some of our new customers will be launched on the new platform straight away. Some limitations we used to have when it comes to URL structure have mostly been lifted, so I've been thinking what the perfect URL would be in terms of SEO.

Since we mostly work for pan European customers, the multi regional and multi lingual aspect is a very important one, as it's important to rank well in all countries. I've always figured that even though it would be good to integrate country into the URL somehow to indicate to the engines that this content is meant for a certain country (either by using local TLDs or indicating using Webmaster Tools that a certain subdirectory or subdomain is targeting a country specifically), there are multiple countries with the same language (for instance, they speak French in France but also in Belgium), which could cause duplicate content issues:

www.webshop.com/be/fr/french-product-name
www.webshop.com/fr/fr/french-product-name

I guess it won't matter much whether you use fr.webshop.com, www.webshop.com/fr or www.webshop.fr, it's mostly the decision IF you want to include country somehow. What do you all think, is this important? Or is the multi lingual component enough for pages to rank well in several countries? For instance, if we were to use the language component only:

www.webshop.com/fr/french-product-name

Would this have the potential to rank well in both the French speaking part of Belgium, as well as France?

Michel

[OlegKorneitchouk]

If there are absolutely no differences at all between Belgium and France French, then I would just go with the language in the url (/fr/).

However, if there are pricing/location/banner/any differences between the two pages, I would split them up (/be-fr/ and /fr-fr/ - having both variables in one 'folder' be better than additional another subfolder).

"www.webshop.com/fr/french-product-name Would this have the potential to rank well in both the French speaking part of Belgium, as well as France?"

Yes

[irvingw]

Folders with language/regions are the better way to go, put it all under one .COM site, easier to maintain.

If you need both /be/fr/ and fr/fr/   sections on your site then i would advise you to rewrite the content in one of those sections to make it unique. Use country and language meta tags, include different addresses and other signals indicating region.

[DocdataCommerce]

Thanks Oleg and Irving!

There are only very minor differences between the countries that speak the same languages. Sometimes there will be price differences, though not always, and we use callcenters that have different phone numbers for different countries. That's all though, and so that's not much.

So, we don't need the country in the URL. We would be able to determine country by using Geo IP and preselect that. I guess the most important question for is, if there's any reason you think we should include the country in the URL anyway?