Running a non English website

[Abhi]

Have you ever run a non-English website ? A lot of things could go wrong from the CMS, SEO, URL structure, visitor rate, visitor retainment and so on.

I think Facebook and Twitter are doing well with non English content. Is there any scope for us to do it successfully ?

 

[admin]

The biggest issue is URL. Very few software support non Latin character in the URL. I am currently using one and I have to go with a plain URL.

 

[Abhi]

> @admin I have to go with a plain URL.

That is bad. Won't it affect SEO ?

I tried with WordPress. It supports such URLs. It could be the one I was using and might not work for a different language.

 

[phenomlab]

> @Abhi That is bad. Won't it affect SEO ?

SEO isn't concerned about URL format. It's mostly associated with keywords and content.

 

[admin]

Some articles say that content in URL can be helpful. But it is hard to achieve that when we go for a native language website. Some CMS allows it if we use a plugin. For example, MyBB uses a plugin for pretty URLs.

 

[Abhi]

Let us hope that we can still manage with normal URL and a proper page title with h1 tag.

 

[phenomlab]

@admin Yoast for WordPress is one such plugin that insists you must have the keyword in the URL to improve SEO. To be honest, I haven't found any evidence to support that and no other plugin requests this.

 

[Abhi]

I read some articles on it for light research. It says that too many words in URL is bad, even if they are keywords. But they do suggest that keywords in URL is good.

> Although URLs can include ID numbers and codes, the best practice is to use words that people can comprehend.

 

[LordSaru]

In any event we get it right, my major concern would be a dip in visitor rate because the visitor base will be reduced to people that knows the language in question.

I am not up for this idea.