Same URL for languages sub-directories

[RaquelSaiz]

Hi All,

I have a main domain and 9 different subdirectories for languages,  example:

www.example.com/page.html

www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html

www.example.com/es/page-es.html

we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages, but we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be:

www.example.com/page.html

www.example.com/uk/page.html

www.example.com/es/page.hrml

would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories?

would we need to add canonical tags, at lease for the main domain URLs? www.kornferry.com/page.html

Thank you,

Rachel

[Keszi]

Hi Rachel,

Regarding the language code in the URL, you can leave it (page**-uk**.html,page**-es**.html, etc.), but maybe it would be an idea of having a translated page url for each language. For example:

• domain.com/uk/example
• domain.com/de/beispiel
• domain.com/hu/pelda

This would serve a little bit better than the previous version, where you would have:

• domain.com/uk/example
• domain.com/de/example
• domain.com/hu/example

[R0bin_L0rd]

Hi Rachel, I think István makes a good point about the translated urls but just as a quick follow-up to your original question - it should not cause technical problems to have the page names the same while they are in different directories, because the total file path should be different, as long as you have hreflang properly set up.

Regarding your question about canonical tags - I would not canonicalise some of these language variants to other language variants, even if you do decide to make the page names the same. Hreflang is saying "these two pages are different language variants of the same thing" whereas canonical tags are saying "this page is just the same as this other thing" - the canonical tag doesn't have the language component so could conflict with your hreflang and cause errors with things like return tags. At the very least it could confuse Google as to which page should rank in which country, for instance, how can the /de/ page rank in Germany if we're telling Google it's not the canonical version of the page, but the other one from root is?

Hope that helps!