Multi Language Website and Best Way for Auto Redirects

Question

let's assume we have a domain example.com that contains content for two languages (e.g. German and English).

The site itself is structured by folders, so the URLs for the language versions are:

• example.com/de/ -> German Page
• example.com/en/ -> English Page

If someone now enters example.com in the browser I do not want to show a "select language page" that lets the user choose the language but an automatic detection of the browser language to redirect (301) to /de/ for German users and to /en/ for all others.

That is nothing special so far.

But I fear that search engines like Google will have problems indexing the url example.com. So instead of doing the automatic redirect (302) on that page, what about the following idea:

example.com does a 301 to example.com/en/ in any case and on the page example.com/en/ the language of the user is then detected. If the language is "German", another redirect (301) to example.com/de/ is made. Otherwise, nothing is done. One could even think about checking the referrer on example.com/en/ if it comes from example.com and only in that case, probe for the German language of the user. The advantage of that would be that a German user could actively switch to example.com/en/ without triggering another redirect back to the German version.

Is such as method for redirecting in a multi language page a good idea in regards to SEO terms?

Answer 1

Google doesn't index pages that redirect. If your domain home URL just has auto-detect redirect or "choose language" functionality, it isn't going to get indexed. But that is fine. You want your language sub-pages indexed in place of your domain home URL.

The best practice in a case like this is:

• Auto redirect from the home URL when a language preference can be determined either from the Accept-Language header or from geographically locating the IP address.
• If the language cannot be automatically determined on the home URL, show a menu that lets users select their language. In many cases bots don't have a preferred language set, so this menu lets bots easily find and crawl all your languages.
• NEVER auto-redirect from URLs for a specific language. example.com/de/ should never automatically redirect to example.com/en/ or the other way around. Any automatic language detection is imperfect and it is important to allow users to make language decisions on their own. At the most you could put a prominent notice on the page saying "Click here for the English version of this page."
• Use hreflang tags in every page that is available in multiple languages to tell search engines about the others.
• Provide a language selection widget on every page for users. It is common to put it in the header or the footer.

For more info see How should I structure my URLs for both SEO and localization?

Answer 2

Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/managing-multi-regional-sites

Methods for indicating your alternate pages https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/localized-versions?hl=nl#methods-for-indicating-your-alternate-pages