Translate URLs
When working with multi-language content, provide URLs in the same language as the website to improve the overall customer experience. The URL can be customized to display the translation at the Category Root, the Category URL, the Product URL, or all three:
Aside from the initial setup, done manually in the Admin Console, creating translatable URLs for Products and Categories is most often accomplished through a Product integration job.
It is important to note that translating URLs will not result in a duplicate content penalty when considering Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Set up
All steps within this article are performed within the Admin Console.
Settings
Two Settings are involved in translating URLs:
- Catalog Root Path
- Product Canonical Root Path
Find these Settings in the Admin Console: Admin Console > Administration > Settings > Catalog > URLMapping section, or search using the search bar.
The same URL Mapping section has a Use Home Page Url Segment Across Catalog Pages setting. When enabled, the website's Home Page Url Segment is added to all catalog pages (product list, product detail, brand, and search results pages), not just content pages, so a multilingual site can use a single, unified language segment (for example, domain/en/...) across the whole site instead of adding language indicators to each Root Path setting individually. This setting is website-specific and is turned on by default for new websites; it is turned off by default for existing websites to avoid changing their current URLs.
Note
After changing this setting, clear the Admin Console cache (and the browser cache, if needed) to see the updated URLs on the storefront.
Note
Translated URLs will only display when text is provided for the default language for the Catalog and Product Settings listed above.
Modify the root URL in the translation dictionary
Note
You must have translated values for the Catalog Root Path, Product Canonical Root Path, and Brands Root Path settings to support catalog hreflang attributes. Each permutation between a setting and a language must be unique to support displaying the correct language to search engine crawlers.
- Go to the Settings listed above and enter the desired default language text.
- Go to Administration > Localization > Translation Dictionary
- Use the Keyword search and search for "root".
- Catalog_UrlRoot and Product_UrlRoot should display. If not, click More Options and select Generate Records.
- For both Catalog_UrlRoot and Product_UrlRoot, click Edit and enter the translation into the Translation field.
Product and category URL translation
Modify the product URL translation
- Go to Catalog > Products.
- Find the desired Product.
- Click Edit, then select the Field Translation icon next to the URL Segment field.
- Enter the translated text for the desired language.
Modify the category URL translation
- Go to Catalog > Categories
- It may be necessary to select the appropriate website from the website selector menu.
- Find the Category associated with the previously modified Product.
- Click Edit, then select the Field Translation icon next to the URL Segment field.
- Enter the translated text for the desired language.
When these steps are completed, rebuild the search index. Go to Marketing > Search > Indexing, and click Rebuild All.
View the translated URLs on the website
- Go to the website.
- Change the displayed language to the desired language using the language drop-down.
- Go to the modified product.
- Translations for root path, category URL segment and product URL segment display for the selected language.