If you have read our previous article, you are familiar with the various methods of URL structuring in designing a multilingual website. Today we want to tell you a few more ways and review the latest tips on designing such websites together.
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URL structure
As you know, in the previous article we explained about ccTLD, Subdomain + gTLD and Subdirectory + gTLD methods. Here are some other methods:
URL parameters method
An example of the structure of URL Parameters is as follows: website.com?country=fr. This method has many disadvantages, including lack of understanding by search engines and its use in the design of a multilingual website is not recommended.
Our suggestion for multilingual web design and URL structure is Subdirectory method. This method is easy to do. Especially for websites in which the content of the text has not changed in different languages and only the translated text is displayed in the language of the user’s choice.
You can create the URL structure for different languages as follows:
- Website.com for the standard and main mode, which is English in many countries
- Website.com/uk/ for the UK edition
- Website.com/es/ for Spanish speaking users
Or you can combine language and geographical location:
- Website.com/en-us/ for English speaking customers in the US
- Website.com/en-uk/ for English speaking clients in the UK
Duplicate content
Duplicate Content is one of the problems in designing multilingual sites that include geographical segregation. This means that English content for customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia – whose official language is English – is placed separately on the Website is completely or largely identical. This confuses the search engines, which will negatively affect your SEO.
For this purpose, using simple elements in HTML for search engines, it can be determined that the content of these pages is the same and related to each other.
The following code tells search engines that website.com targets English-speaking customers based in the UK, and also indicates that there are two other types of the same content on the site, one for US customers and one for customers in Australia (au).
<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://example.com” hreflang=”en-uk” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://example.com/us/” hreflang=”en-us” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”https://example.com/au/” hreflang=”en-au” />
Dates
Sometimes it is necessary to change the way the date is displayed on the website. For example, the format of the Solar Hijri calendar used for Iranians is different from the format of Gregorian calendars.
Text security codes
We all know the codes that are used to increase the security of the website to fill out the form or enter the website. These security elements of the website, known as Captcha, may include letters and numbers in a particular language; For example, an English-speaking person entering the website will probably have trouble filling out a Captcha in Persian or Russian, and this needs to be considered in designing a bilingual or multilingual site.