Multilanguage Setup - Remove duplicate content for SEO

Kirby 2 Solved ✅
1

My clients site is available in two languages, English and German. As there are more languages planned, especially ‘variations’ of German like Swiss or Austrian with adapted contacted details etc I have the following language setup:

c::set('languages', array(
     array(
        'code' => 'en',
        'name' => 'English'
        'locale' => 'en'
        'url' => '/en',
     ), 
     array(
        'code' => 'de-de',
        'name' => 'Deutschland',
        'locale' => 'de_DE',
        'url' => '/de',
        'default' => true,
     ),
)

Fairly normal so far, I guess. However, we just noticed that the German content is available under /de/kontakt as well as /kontakt. This is horrible for SEO. When I open the website I get automatically forwarded to /de and stay under this folder than if I’m just navigating around innocently. If I remove the de the urls still work, and I don’t “get it back”, i.e. it stays gone after navigating through the page.

What do you think would be the easiest solution to get rid of the duplication (at least on a SEO level)? Ideally afterwards all urls would contain the language code de.

I thought about setting up the router to handle that, but it seems very hacky?!

2

I think what is missing in your language configuration is the default language, if German is supposed to be your default language, the config should look like this:

c::set('languages', array(
    'en' => array(
      'name'    => 'English',
      'code'    => 'en',
      'locale'  => 'en_US',
      'url'     => '/en',
    ),
    'de' => array(
      'name'    => 'Deutsch',
      'code'    => 'de',
      'locale'  => 'de_DE.UTF-8',
      'default' => true,
      'url'     => '/de',
    ),
));
3

Thank you, but my router does actually look like that, I edited it above… Something messed up my vim and I can’t copy/paste anymore :unamused:

4

I wonder why this happens, because it shouldn’t, the rewrite works ok on the start page but not on the subpages. Wonder if we should create an issue on GitHub.

Anyway, I would rather put a permanent redirect rule into the .htaccess instead of setting up a router.

5

I’d guess that this happens around here: https://github.com/getkirby/kirby/blob/master/branches/multilang/site.php#L173-L176

6

I discovered that I don’t even need to redirect and am now inserting a rel="canonical" tag if the de part is present in the url:

<?php
$url_segments = str::split(url::path(), '/');
$first = array_shift($url_segments);

if ($first == 'de'): ?>
    <link rel="canonical" href="<?= $site->url() ?>/<?= implode('/', $url_segments) ?>" />
<?php endif; ?>

This seems to work quite well and prevents google from treating the two versions as different pages.

7

[added 1 day later:]
The following pointer avoids your problem, that the German content is available under /de/kontakt as well as /kontakt.
It avoids all pages like /de/kontakt!

This trick we can find at Kirby Docs: Languages > Setup!
[/added]

If your default language has

      'url'     => '/',

you may want to use

  <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo $site->url() ?>/<?php echo $page->uri() ?>" />

without your if-statement.
This link shows always the page-link of your default language.

This also runs, if your Kirby runs in a subdirectory like http://127.0.0.1/test_kirby/.

8

But this is not the case, the default language in the To’s example has

'url' => '/de',

otherwise the problem wouldn’t even exist …

9

With the KISS principle I say: “Keep it simple and straightforward”!

In my experience it’s usually easier to get around a problem than it is to deal permanently and for all time!

Therefore, I would change the URL of the default language and thus eliminate the main problem. For SEO, you can set up a Redirekt of the path /de, if needed, e.g. temporarily.