Articles on: SEO

Setting SEO region for site language versions

SEO region is a recommendation for search engines (like Google) to display pages in a particular language in a specific region for those users who speak that language. If you have created a multilingual site, if necessary, you can specify the SEO region for each site's language version. For example, if you have a language version in the German language, you can select for search engines which region this language version belongs to, e.g., to the "Austria" region. This way, search engines will try to display the German language version's pages for German-speaking visitors in Austria.

Note: This is a feature for advanced users.

Important: After selecting the SEO region, the pages' URLs (links) in the current language version will also be changed. For instance, if page links in German started with

https://example.com/de/

, then after selecting the SEO region "Austria", all links in this language version will start with

https://example.com/de-at/

, where

-at

indicates that the SEO region is Austria. In this case, redirects from old URLs to new ones will not be made automatically. Previous URLs will be unavailable.

Note: If you set the SEO region for the main language version of your site, its page links will not change. For the main language version, the SEO region is specified only in the page's code, and the main language version's pages' links always start simply with a domain without a language and region identifier after it:

https://example.com/

You can select one SEO region for each language version of your site. By default, the region is set to International, meaning that search engines will not consider the site's recommendation of SEO region. If you expect users from different countries to visit a specific language version your the site, you can leave the "International" region. It depends on your website promotion strategy. If you are unsure whether you need to specify the SEO region, you can also leave the "International" region.

To set a specific SEO region, follow these steps:

Open site settings and go to the Multilingual site section. If you haven't added language versions to your site yet, you can do it using this guide.

Click on the three dots next to the language version for which you want to specify the SEO region and choose the SEO region option:

In a new window, click on the drop-down list with the words International to select the region you need. You can start typing the country's name to find it in the list. After selecting the desired region, click the Save button:

Important: If you specify an SEO region for any language version (except for the main one), all links of pages in this language version will be changed (the URL's part after the site root will be changed; the region identifier will be added in addition to the language identifier). In this case, redirects from old URLs to new ones will not be made automatically; the pages will become inaccessible by previous URLs.

Publish your site for the changes to take effect.

Done! Now, links of pages in this language version include both language and region identifiers (e.g.,

https://exmaple.com/de-at/

, where

is the German language and

-at

is the Austria region), which will also be displayed in the pages' code in the hreflang attributes, if you use them.

Note: The SEO region will also affect the hreflang attributes (the region identifier will also be added, just like in the URL).

Tip: If you want to add 302 redirects from old URLs to new ones, you can do it by using this guide. If you're going to add 301 redirects, you can open any tables editor (e.g., Google Sheets) and create a table with 2 columns: from and to which URL you need to add redirects. Then send this table to us at support@devellp.com, indicating which site is in question. After that, our support team will add the redirects you need. However, as a security measure, please send this table from your email address, which was used when registering on Devellp.

Updated on: 04/07/2023

Was this article helpful?

Thank you!