Translating slugs for multi-language sites - good idea?

metricsmuse

I'm in the middle of a site localisation project and keep going back and forth on whether to translate the slugs. Apart from the obvious thing of it looking cleaner for users, is it actually worth doing? Or does it become a complete nightmare for analytics and ongoing maintenance?

I've seen a few takes on this - someone mentioned it helps cover more long-tail keywords and related terms, which makes sense. But then another person asked whether the slug even has a real SEO impact these days. Honestly, I'm not sure what to do.

Would love to hear from anyone who's been through this. Did you go for translated slugs and regret it, or find it made a difference? Or did you keep the original and it was fine?

pixelperfect

I do the same - helps you capture more long-tail keywords naturally.

budgetburner

Absolutely. Ignore the slugs and watch your own pages tear each other apart in Google. Same content, different language paths - that's cannibalisation waiting to happen. You wouldn't run two identical landing pages without 301s, so why treat translated URLs any differently?

metricsmuse

genuinely curious - what's the thinking behind that? would love to hear your logic

budgetburner

Absolutely you need to. Using /en/my_watch_product and /nl/my_watch_product without translating the slug is asking for trouble. Even with hreflang tags properly set, Google will still see near-identical URLs competing for the same query - especially if the product name is the same. You end up with cannibalisation, confused indexation, and a weaker signal for every single language variant. Why bother with translation at all if you're going to half-arse the URL structure?

metricsmuse

Honestly, I've always wondered the same thing. Does the slug actually do anything for SEO, or is it just one of those nice-to-haves everyone insists on?

budgetburner

Slug is your document name whether you like it or not. Roughly 80% of your relevance and authority lives right there. Faffing with translations? You just killed that factor.