This is a two part question regarding asp.net mvc multilanguage urls/routing and SEO best practices/benefits…
Question Part 1)
I’m being asked to create a new ASP.NET MVC website that will support a minimum (at first) of two languages (English and French) perhaps in the future, 3 languages…
As far as localizing the application (labels, jQuery errors, etc) things should be ok using resource files and I’ve found many examples on this…but my concern/question is more about the URLs.
In terms of SEO, what is the recommended approach between these two fashions?
Fashion 1 (no culture folder)
www.mydomain.com/create-account
www.mydomain.com/creer-un-compte
Fashion 2 (with built in culture folder)
www.mydomain.com/create-account
www.mydomain.com/fr/creer-un-compte <--notice the “fr” folder
Is there a known issue/penalty in using one over the other?
Or is it so small that it becomes irrelevant!
Question Part 2)
To achieve Fashion 2, I’ve already found an article here: ASP.NET MVC - Localization route
But I’d be curious to find how to achieve Fashion 1.
Does anyone have any links?
In addition and as far as I know, URL Rewriting is not what I’m looking for since I do not wish to “redirect” users…I simply want the urls to be showing in the appropriate language without having to show the culture in the url
Thanks in advance for any help on this!