How to Translate URLs in Multilingual Sites Effectively

Effectively translating URLs for multilingual sites poses a significant challenge: how to preserve SEO value while providing a great user experience across diverse markets?

According to Google, the structure you choose can have a major impact on your visibility and reach. Website owners need to consider several factors when determining their approach to multilingual URLs: the size of their business, the markets they’re targeting, and the various approaches available regarding site structure.

Here, we’ll explore three primary approaches—country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs), subdomains, and subdirectories—highlighting practical implementation strategies for each. By considering your unique business needs alongside best practices for multilingual URL structure, you’ll be able to decide upon the best route for boosting your own international search presence.

TL;DR

• URL structure matters: Choose between ccTLDs, subdomains, subdirectories, or URL parameters based on your business size and target markets.
  
  • Subdirectories are often the most effective for businesses seeking a balance between SEO and ease of management.
• Hreflang tags: Implementing hreflang tags ensures search engines serve the correct language version, ensuring a better user experience.
• SEO optimization: Proper canonical URLs prevent duplicate content issues, and managing URL parameters minimizes crawl budget waste.
• Translation management: Weglot simplifies multilingual site translation by automating URL management and synchronization, making it easy for businesses to go global.

URL Options for Multilingual Sites

When implementing multilingual sites, choosing the right URL structure is an important consideration for both SEO and user experience. Let’s look at the top options:

Country-Code Top-Level Domains

Country-Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), such as ‘example.fr’ or ‘example.de’, provide the strongest geo-targeting signal. This structure allows businesses to target specific countries, boosting local SEO and building user trust. However, managing multiple domains can be resource-intensive, requiring careful planning around hosting costs and technical resources. Additionally, ccTLDs necessitate UTF-8 encoding for international characters, which can complicate implementation.

ccTLDs are ideal for businesses targeting specific countries, especially those in competitive markets like ecommerce or local services. Airbnb use ccTLDs, for example, airbnb.fr for visitors coming to the site in France.

Subdomains

Subdomains, formatted as ‘fr.example.com’ or ‘de.example.com’, offer a flexible alternative. They allow for distinct language versions while making it easy to maintain a unified brand identity. However, proper hosting configuration is required to ensure effective geo-targeting.

Subdomains also enable cookie sharing across language versions, improving the user experience but requiring careful DNS management. Proper DNS configuration is essential for directing users to the correct content based on their geographic location. However, if DNS records are incorrect or outdated, users may be directed to the wrong server, leading to confusion and poor performance.

Furthermore, each subdomain typically requires its own SSL certificate, as they are treated as separate entities by browsers and search engines. Subdomains are good for companies with diverse product lines or services that cater to different geographic regions or languages. Wikipedia uses subdomains (e.g. de.wikipedia.org for Germany) to provide localized content and a better user experience.

Subdirectories

Subdirectories, like ‘example.com/fr/’, simplify management by keeping all content under one domain. This structure aids in distributing link equity across pages and can improve SEO by making the site easier to crawl. However, it requires meticulous server configuration to handle multiple language paths correctly.

Proper handling of relative versus absolute URLs is essential to avoid broken links, and a well-configured Content Delivery Network (CDN) can cache static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files, reducing load times significantly. Implementing cache-control headers and setting appropriate Time to Live (TTL) values for each language variant can help to strike a balance between content freshness and server load reduction.

Subdirectories are perfect for businesses looking for a cost-effective solution to manage multilingual content without the complexity of multiple domains. A company like Nike uses subdirectories (e.g. nike.com/fr/) to organize content by language while maintaining the authority of its main domain.

URL Parameters

Due to their complexity, URL parameters can be problematic for SEO. Search engines may view parameterized URLs as separate pages, leading to duplicate content issues and wasted crawl budgets. To mitigate these problems, it’s essential to minimize the use of parameters where possible and implement 301 redirects for outdated URLs.

URL parameters—often seen as query strings in URLs—can complicate SEO efforts. Each combination of parameters can create multiple URLs that point to the same content, leading to issues such as duplicate content and keyword cannibalization.

Search engines treat each parameterized URL as a unique page, which can dilute ranking signals and confuse crawlers about which version to index. This redundancy distracts Google’s web crawling bots and increases server load, making it harder for the crawler to access important pages.

To manage URL parameters effectively, it’s worth implementing best practices like using static URLs for indexable content, and ensuring that non-indexable parameters are set as query strings. This approach helps shift crawler focus to valuable pages while minimizing potential SEO pitfalls.

URL parameters are good for ecommerce platforms and websites with extensive filtering options, such as travel booking sites or online retailers. Websites like Amazon use URL parameters to track user behavior and personalize shopping experiences (e.g. sort=price-ascending).

Essential Considerations When Handling SEO for Multilingual URLs

When thinking about SEO for multilingual URLs there’s a lot to keep in mind. Here we’ll take a look at the main considerations. You can also find some excellent examples of successful brand execution via our blog on Multilingual Websites That Did Everything Right.

Hreflang Tags

Advanced implementation of hreflang tags is essential for ensuring that search engines serve the correct language or regional version of a page. This can be done not only through HTML markup but also by including hreflang tags in HTTP headers for non-HTML content types like PDFs or dynamic pages.

The implementation of the x-default hreflang tag on language selection pages helps search engines understand which version to display when no specific match is found. Regular checks with tools like Hreflang Checker can confirm that your configuration is correct.

Geotargeting

Managing conflicting geo-targeting signals is needed since Google primarily relies on country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and Search Console settings to determine the intended audience. Aligning these elements helps avoid confusion. Additionally, utilizing local TLDs can boost your site’s visibility in specific regions, as they indicate to search engines the geographic focus of your content.

Crawling

To improve crawl efficiency, employing XML sitemap clustering strategies can effectively group language versions together. This organization makes it easier for search engines to index your content accurately. Furthermore, implementing rel=”next" and rel="prev" tags across paginated content ensures that search engines understand the relationship between different language versions, facilitating better crawling.

Index

Proper canonical implementation is vital for avoiding duplicate content issues across different language versions. By specifying a canonical URL for each language variant, you signal to search engines which page should be prioritized in search results. This is particularly important for translations that are very similar, as it helps maintain clarity in indexing and prevents potential penalties for duplicate content.

Language/Region Targeting

When targeting multiple regions with shared languages, such as English for the US, UK, and AU, careful management of hreflang chains is necessary. Each version must link back to its corresponding regional variant using hreflang tags to prevent indexing issues. Additionally, optimizing your site for local search engines like Yandex or Baidu requires a tailored approach that considers unique algorithms and ranking factors specific to those markets.

Slugs

A URL slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page in a human-readable format, and mastering slug translation can go a long way to optimizing for international SEO. It’s essential to use UTF-8 encoding for non-ASCII characters in slugs, ensuring that URLs are compatible across different languages and scripts. For example, slugs containing characters like umlauts must be properly encoded to avoid errors, plus hyphens instead of underscores for better readability and SEO performance. They should also be concise and descriptive to encourage clickability.

Handling bidirectional text in slugs can add complexity, so developers should ensure proper encoding and storage practices in databases to maintain integrity across various platforms.

Website Translation and Localization Best Practices

Website translation and localization at scale requires meticulous planning and implementation to ensure content parity and an optimal user experience. Here are some best practices to consider:

• Clearly defined workflows: Establish workflows from the start, covering initial machine translations, native-speaker editing, and final proofreading to manage project scale and timelines effectively.
• Localization: Adapt content to the cultural nuances of your target audience. This includes considering language, imagery, and symbols to avoid misinterpretations.
• Continuous feedback: Invite input from translators, developers, marketers, and other stakeholders. Learn from customer reviews and user feedback to create a cycle of continuous improvement that enhances translation quality.
• Skill development: Invest in training for your translation team to improve their understanding of nuanced language and brand voice while keeping them updated on industry trends.
• Leverage technology: Use a website translation software like Weglot to centralize projects and automate synchronization with your Content Management System (CMS). This integration helps avoid version control issues and ensures all language versions reflect the latest updates.
• Advanced quality assurance protocols: Implement automated checks for character encoding and string length validation to ensure accurate rendering across languages. Establish efficient workflows combining automated translations with human reviews for better speed and quality.
• Performance optimization techniques: Optimize font loading for various character sets and ensure proper Right-to-Left (RTL) styling for languages like Arabic to improve the user experience without compromising site speed.

• Integration requirements: Connect translation systems with existing content management workflows using API implementations and webhook configurations for real-time updates across language versions.
• SEO considerations: Stay updated on SEO trends by regularly revisiting keywords used on multilingual sites, adapting to changing shopping trends to maintain visibility in search engines.

Remember, getting an effective translation process in place at the very beginning may take time, but it’ll likely reduce the workload in the long-term. For instance, transitioning from a simple string-based storage system to a more complex structured format to handle multiple languages can incur substantial costs in both time and resources.

Website owners should adhere to Google’s international SEO documentation and IANA’s language codes to stay up-to-speed with best practices and avoid any major structural overloads in future.

Streamlining Multilingual URL Management with Weglot

Our own translation software Weglot has been designed to combat the complexities of multilingual URL management, and much, much more!

Weglot’s approach to subdirectory-based URL structures deserves particular attention, as it allows for clear organization of content in a format like ‘domain.com/fr/’ or ‘domain.com/es/’. This structure maintains the integrity of the primary domain but also channels SEO benefits directly to the main site. Our platform automatically implements URL localization through this subdirectory or subdomain approach (depending on the structure you decide), ensuring that each translated version of a page is easily accessible and indexed by search engines.

Furthermore, Weglot takes care of automated hreflang tag implementation, which is needed for proper language and region targeting. This means that search engines can accurately serve the appropriate language version to users based on their location.

By maintaining consistent URL structures across translated versions, Weglot adheres to Google’s URL structure guidelines, ensuring that every language variant is correctly formatted and easy to navigate. For example, a page translated into Japanese would follow a structure like ‘domain.com/ja/’, with proper UTF-8 encoding to handle complex characters.

Weglot also features automated synchronization between original and translated URLs whenever content updates occur. This ensures that any changes made to the primary language version are reflected across all translated pages, with no need for manual intervention. As Sophie von Kirchmann from Polaar noted:

“We’ve seen undeniable time-saving through Weglot’s instant translation. If a modification is made on a product page, we know that it’s automatically translated and live on our multilingual pages."

If you need to refine any automated content, you can do so by using Weglot’s Visual Editor, which allows you to edit words directly on the page. Editors can check if translated text fits into existing page designs, and make amendments as necessary—a real benefit for languages with longer string lengths, or for RTL scripts.

Manual amends are also reduced through our app’s translation glossary. This enables you to set rules and preferences for translation choices, which are then adhered to in all future dynamic translations for site-wide consistency.

Overall, Weglot’s URL handling aligns with Google’s recommended best practices by default, positioning it as an SEO-optimized solution for designing a multi-language website. Our users gain from simplified multilingual URL management and avoid potential SEO pitfalls commonly associated with manual translations and inconsistent URL structures.

Transform Your Global Presence: Get Started with Weglot Today

Proper URL translation can sometimes be forgotten amid the many facets of website localization, but correct implementation can boost international SEO and improve the user experience.

Weglot expertly handles the technical complexities of URL translation, automatically managing URL structure, character encoding, and language prefixes to ensure simple navigation across languages. It’s a complete translation management solution, and one that scales in line with business needs.

With support for non-Latin alphabets and special characters in URLs, Weglot guarantees that your content remains accessible to diverse audiences. And automatic synchronization of foreign-language URLs occurs whenever content changes, keeping everything up-to-date with minimal manual intervention. As Adèle Aubry from The Bradery states:

“It takes us about ten minutes twice a week to double-check everything is running how we want it. Everything else is done by Weglot.”

Try Weglot’s 10-day free trial today!