Oct 14, 2019
Effect of non-English URLs on SEO and ranking
Example: if a page was about used cars in the Middle East and the language of the page content was in Arabic, and the targeted audience was Arabic speaking users. If the slug was "used-cars-middle-east" which translates to "سيارات مستعملة في الشرق الأوسط" would google understand the translation and associate the slug with its Arabic translation?
My case is that I have a site with Arabic content, but my URL slugs are all in English (but exact translations to the topics of each page) would it be better for my ranking if I had the slugs changed to Arabic? or would google understand the translation?
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Oct 15, 2019
would google understand that my English slug is related to that Arabic phrase
Doubtful.
The page would match the Arabic keywords query, with the Arabic content. Nothing to do with the slug.
I am just trying to decide wither or not I should change my slugs too improve ranking.
Personally say no.
Dont just do for SEO. It unlikely to be a big benefit. The issues caused by the 'moving' of content, will be
bigger than the small potential gains.
There will be problems, and the small SEO gains is likely to be small.
But if have other reasons to make the move, then may be worth it.
Original Poster Rasool Kilani marked this as an answer
Oct 15, 2019
Hi there,
It's advisable to have your URLs in the same language you want your content to rank for.
If the URL slugs are in english, Google isn't translating them.
Original Poster Rasool Kilani marked this as an answer
All Replies (4)
Hi there,
It's advisable to have your URLs in the same language you want your content to rank for.
If the URL slugs are in english, Google isn't translating them.
Original Poster Rasool Kilani marked this as an answer
Oct 15, 2019
Just to add what already said, there are other considerations than ranking (franky its a tiny consideration).
For example most search results, show the URL, or at least a 'breadcrumb' like display composed of components from the URL.
If using English words in slugs, then that is what users will see, if the user doesnt understand English, but reads Arabic, they might be confused, or at least a little weary.
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Oct 15, 2019
Thank you for your response, but let elaborate,
I didn't mean to ask if google would translate my slugs to Arabic, I meant to ask that if a user searches for a phrase in Arabic, would google understand that my English slug is related to that Arabic phrase, and help me rank better based on the fact that my slug means the exact same Arabic keyword but in English? (given that the content is in Arabic)Does Google understand the meaning of slugs? or does it just compare the characters in the slug with the keywords?
* Please note that I am not concerned about users not understanding the slug, because English is a common language in my country, I am just trying to decide wither or not I should change my slugs too improve ranking.
Last edited Oct 15, 2019
would google understand that my English slug is related to that Arabic phrase
Doubtful.
The page would match the Arabic keywords query, with the Arabic content. Nothing to do with the slug.
I am just trying to decide wither or not I should change my slugs too improve ranking.
Personally say no.
Dont just do for SEO. It unlikely to be a big benefit. The issues caused by the 'moving' of content, will be
bigger than the small potential gains.
There will be problems, and the small SEO gains is likely to be small.
But if have other reasons to make the move, then may be worth it.
Original Poster Rasool Kilani marked this as an answer